Mark Hemingway

Mark Hemingway, guitar addict.

Silicon Valley has long been the Wild West of capitalism, but we may finally be reaching a point where Congress feels both entitled and justified in starting to regulate monopolistic tech giants. Exhibit A: The announcement Wednesday that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be testifying before…

Citibank has announced a new “U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy” a move it descries as a direct response to recent gun violence. At the same time, Citibank claims this new policy is “not centered on an ideological mission to rid the world of firearms.” The measures that Citibank is instituting are no…

Nashville

There was an interesting announcement on Wednesday for Ben Rhodes, formerly the Obama White House deputy national security adviser. Rhodes, you may recall, caught some flack at the end of Obama’s presidency for admitting to the New York Times that he was manipulating the media in his efforts to…

On Tuesday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted multiple media outlets were were confirming the existence of a second anti-Trump "dossier" authored by Cody Shearer, a longtime associate of the notorious Sidney Blumenthal, who as a very checkered history of finding himself at the center of Clinton scandals…

State Dept. Official Reportedly Passed On Second Trump ‘Dossier’ Written by One of Clinton’s Most Discreditable Supporters

Can anyone think of a better way for the Grammys’ to commemorate the #MeToo movement than to have a failed politician with a long history of protecting alleged sexual harassers read from a book that includes a slimy accusation against our female U.N. ambassador? Because the show organizers…

Earlier this week, Senator Dianne Feinstein released some 315 pages of closed-door testimony by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Fusion GPS was the firm paid by Democrats to compile the dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Well, it's not every day that Guitar World has an eye-opening political report, but here we are. In a normal year, it would be shocking enough to learn the Pentagon had a secret multimillion dollar program to investigate UFOs. But since it's still 2017, the least “normal year” in recent memory…

Covering the Trump presidency has not always been the media’s finest hour, but even grading on that curve, the month of December has brought astonishing screwups. Professor and venerable political observer Walter Russell Mead tweeted on December 8, “I remember Watergate pretty well, and I don’t…

If we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that the Republican party, even when handed full control of the American government, is so riven and otherwise dysfunctional that it simply can’t govern. The one consolation Republicans have is that voters seem to intuitively understand that while…

Les Whitten died over the weekend. Whitten was an investigative reporter who worked with famed columnist Jack Anderson, author of Washington’s Merry-Go-Round column. (Fox’s Brit Hume is another notable reporter who worked for Anderson.) However, Whitten was reasonably well-known in his own right.…

On Monday Washington Post columnist Christine Emba wrote a piece headlined “Let's Rethink Sex.” It's a commendable essay in a lot of ways, but the headline is a bit misleading in the sense that it advocates rethinking a view of sexuality that much of the country never signed on to in the first…

The wave of sexual abuse allegations against men from Harvey Weinstein to Roy Moore has prompted significant reflection among liberals about how Bill Clinton’s misdeeds were handled and how his accusers were treated in the 1990s.

Nearly a month ago, I wrote “There's an Awakening Against Sexual Assault, So Why Is No One Talking About Bill Clinton?” It took long enough, but there is a growing chorus of voices on the left demanding that Clinton’s crimes not be ignored. The disturbing allegations against Roy Moore appear to…

I recently saw a sportswriter on social media paying tribute to a deceased editor he’d had the pleasure of working with. “The best editors are a psychologist, a friend, an idea person, a life vest,” he wrote. “Every story written is a trust fall into an editor’s arms.” I don’t doubt this sentiment…

On October 30, special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy chairman Rick Gates on 12 charges, including money laundering, false statements, and conspiracy against the United States, related to their work with Ukrainian…

October 31 marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and the occasion brings to mind a joke: A young priest asks a wise older priest, "What's the difference between the Jesuit and Dominican orders?" The older priest says wearily, "Well, actually they have a lot in common. They were both…

Axios has put together this nifty series of charts detailing the timeline of sexual assault charges against Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby. The charts track the dates of when the various incidents allegedly occurred relative to the years they were first…

James O’Keefe’s undercover investigations of various liberal institutions have resulted in everything from congressional action to criminal charges filed against the conservative provocateur. His latest exposé reveals an important truth, but maybe not the one he intended.

The Boy Scouts of America announced Wednesday that they would admit girls into the organization for the first time ever. From now on, Cub Scout dens (usually around 6 to 12 kids) will be single gender—either male or female. Cub Scout packs (comprised of multiple dens) will have the option of being…

I was recently in San Francisco on business. I was there on business because, well, I would never go there for pleasure.

Retired Lt. Col. Robert M. Heffington, who recently quit teaching at West Point, has penned an open letter about a series of disturbing developments that have taken place at the U.S. Military Academy, starting with the revelation that West Point graduate Spenser Rapone is an avowed Communist who…

I was recently in San Francisco on business. I was there on business because, well, I would never go there for pleasure.

The New York Times has a report about an internal struggle at the ACLU. The organization helped sue to for the right of assembly for the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August that resulted in the death of a young woman, after a car driven by one of the white supremacists plowed into…

C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as the JFK assassination. It's an odd bit of historical trivia that often gets cited to show how even important markers can get lost amid earth shattering news. It might be as stretch to compare Tom Petty to those intellectual titans, but it…

Controversial firebrand Roy Moore’s primary victory Tuesday over appointed Alabama senator Luther Strange to run for the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions wasn't even close. Moore won the race by nearly 10 points.

The evidence clearly suggests that Russia tried to influence in our election last year, and more broadly, Russia is actively trying to destabilize the U.S. both politically and culturally. Russians are running a 24/7 propaganda operation on D.C. airwaves, for crying out loud. They're not even being…

The fate of America's latest attempt at comprehensive health care reform may hinge on the opinions of a late night talk show host. I've nothing against Jimmy Kimmel; topical political jokes are the meat and potatoes of late-night comedy. And in fact, Kimmel has a reputation for joking about the…

For some months now, the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Devin Nunes, has been investigating whether there were political motivations to the the Obama White House’s “unmasking” of American citizens who were named in intelligence reports. Nunes has previously stated that he has seen…

In July, I noted that Sputnik Radio—an honest-to-God Russian propaganda outlet—had started broadcasting on Washington D.C. airwaves:

Conservative book publisher Regnery, which has published major conservative authors such as Mark Levin and Ann Coulter, has made a startling announcement: They no longer want anything to do with the New York Times’s best-sellers list. According to the Associated Press, “Regnery is annoyed that its…

San Francisco

San Francisco

Ta-Nehisi Coates—national correspondent for the Atlantic, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, National Book Award winner—has a new essay out Thursday, which makes it something of an intellectual holiday for America's liberals.

Pretty incredible quote here in the New York magazine interview with New York mayor Bill de Blasio. Several people have jokingly called the man a communist, but here he is arguing against private property rights more or less on the basis of "each according to his ability, each according to his…

Lakewood, Colorado

Let's cut to the heart of a big problem with Trump's remarks about Charlottesville over the last few days: They were ignorant and inarticulate.

Fred Barnes has a good rundown of the state of play in the Alabama Senate race this morning. He rightly zeroes in on the most important question in the race right now: Will Trump's endorsement of of former Alabama attorney general Luther Strange, who was appointed to fill Jeff Sessions’s seat in…

In July, when news broke that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met last year with a Russian lawyer and a former Russian intelligence officer who promised dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign, there was a media feeding frenzy. After months of speculation…

In July, when news broke that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met last year with a Russian lawyer and a former Russian intelligence officer who promised dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign, there was a media feeding frenzy. After months of speculation…

In The New York Times on Thursday, Lindy West has an op-ed on the recent announcement by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee campaign chairman Ben Ray Luján that the group would not impose a litmus test for Democratic candidates requiring them to be pro-abortion. West is a fairly radical…

Tim Gill is best known as the Denver-based mega-donor who bankrolled the successful national campaign to legalize same-sex marriage. In June, Gill sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone. He was asked about the future of the gay rights movement. If you had any doubt that Gill and other…

Tim Gill is best known as the Denver-based mega-donor who bankrolled the successful national campaign to legalize same-sex marriage. In June, Gill sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone. He was asked about the future of the gay rights movement. If you had any doubt that Gill and other…

As the Senate investigates allegations that elements of the Trump campaign may have been colluding with Russia, an interesting angle has emerged. Fusion GPS is the shadowy research firm that was commissioned by interests aligned with the Democratic party to produce (possibly with the help of the…

My wife and I are record collectors. At the moment, we own 1,151 of them (I have an app on my phone cataloguing the collection), and that number has been growing at a good clip. There’s no real organizing principle—it’s a diverse collection of rock, classical, jazz, soul, and even a fair bit of…

My wife and I are record collectors. At the moment, we own 1,151 of them (I have an app on my phone cataloguing the collection), and that number has been growing at a good clip. There’s no real organizing principle—it’s a diverse collection of rock, classical, jazz, soul, and even a fair bit of…

On Tuesday evening, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal group dedicated to protecting religious liberty. A lawyer that works with the organization, David Cortman, recently represented Trinity Lutheran in its case before the Supreme Court…

On June 24, there was a minor controversy at the “Chicago Dyke March.” Three Jewish lesbians were ejected from the gay pride event because they showed up waving rainbow flags that had stars of David on them. They were accosted by Palestinian sympathizers. March organizers then told them, “Your flag…

In an op-ed in the New York Times Thursday, Mark Penn and Andrew Stein argue that the “path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party.” Penn…

As wealth has poured into the nation’s capital and the city has largely redeveloped over the last two decades, one of the last reminders that Washington, D.C., possessed any local culture at all was the existence of Bluegrass Country 105.5. The FM station was sponsored by American University and…

The rhetoric on the Republican bill in Congress to overhaul Obamacare has been a bit overheated, to say the least. Specifically, the preferred criticism of the bill seems to be that it will kill hundreds of thousands of people.

On May 29, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a law creating a statewide regulatory framework governing ridesharing services. The impetus for the law was clear—overriding the city of Austin’s onerous ordinances that prompted the sector’s leaders, Uber and Lyft, to stop operating in the state capital…

In a major victory for religious freedom, the Supreme Court ruled today that states cannot exempt churches from benefiting from state programs solely because they are a church.

The “Fight for $15” suffered a hit with the release of a study that hints at the negative effect that Seattle’s dramatic minimum wage increase has led to reduced wages for low-income workers.

Weeks after Germany’s Cabinet announced a plan to fine social media companies over their users “hate speech” and amid efforts to push similar restrictions across the European Union, authorities are cracking down on individuals whom they have deemed to have crossed a line. The New York Times…

On May 29, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a law creating a statewide regulatory framework governing ridesharing services. The impetus for the law was clear—overriding the city of Austin’s onerous ordinances that prompted the sector’s leaders, Uber and Lyft, to stop operating in the state capital…

Yesterday, following the news that a Republican congressmen was shot playing baseball, along with four others, in Virginia, the New York Times wrote what one conservative website is calling the "Worst Editorial In Human History." Discussion of it has dominated social media, and even a number of…

Tuesday afternoon, as I do most days, I went to the YMCA near my house in Alexandria. On the way in, I said hello to my neighbor and her daughter, who is in my own daughter's class at the Lutheran school about a mile up the road. I ran a couple of miles on the treadmill listening to podcasts and…

In recent decades, Portland, Oregon, has acquired a reputation as one of America's most tolerant and liberal cities. In practice, this means there are taxpayer-funded sex changes for municipal employees and lots of bike lanes, but comparatively little tolerant liberalism. The city government has…

In recent decades, Portland, Oregon, has acquired a reputation as one of America's most tolerant and liberal cities. In practice, this means there are taxpayer-funded sex changes for municipal employees and lots of bike lanes, but comparatively little tolerant liberalism. The city government has…

Today's hearing with James Comey contains at least one rather revealing nugget unrelated to the Trump-Russia investigation—that the Obama Justice Department improperly tried to influence the the Clinton email investigation:

David Edelstein is one of the better-known film critics in the country. He's been a critic for decades and is currently the chief film critic for New York magazine, as well as the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and CBS's Sunday Morning. Like everyone else in his position, he recently wrote a…

Fact Check: Did Obama Director of Intelligence James Clapper Deny Collusion Between Trump and Russia?

1) As many liberal commentators have eagerly pointed out, coal is a dying industry, and it makes no sense to prop up a dying industry. The issue, however, isn't whether Trump's pulling out of the Paris Agreement is propping it up so much as refusing to kill the industry prematurely. About a third…

Comedian Adam Carolla and talk radio host Dennis Prager are joining forces to both do a campus tour and make a documentary about it. The two men aim to show how "how so many terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ideas have ruined college for young people and now threaten to ruin the country by…

Like millions of American men, I spent a good number of weeknights in my youth donning a goofy uniform and heading off to church. The meetings all began the same way—we would rise from our folding chairs, make an odd gesture with our hands, and say, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to…

Of all the crazy ways that members of Congress are above the law, the fact that politicians and their staff are largely immune from insider trading laws has to be near the top of the list. (Oh and it's also a problem for federal employees.) It boggles the mind to think of the conflicts of interest…

Like millions of American men, I spent a good number of weeknights in my youth donning a goofy uniform and heading off to church. The meetings all began the same way—we would rise from our folding chairs, make an odd gesture with our hands, and say, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to…

What's interesting about media fact-checkers is that, while they often prove to be subjective in their findings, they do allow others to objectively evaluate them since they append value judgments such as "true" or "false" to statements. I've previously noted two university studies, one at the…

By now, there's a kind of collective Kubler-Ross process that we all go through with the deaths of beloved musicians, accompanied by varying degrees of grief and angst. The one-two gut punch of Prince and Bowie last year will be pretty hard to top. And now, Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell has…

Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey certainly raises a lot of questions. However, the two salient facts here remain: The Trump-Russia investigation isn't going away, and not even the FBI disagrees that it was within the Trump's power to fire a man who serves at the pleasure of the president.…

The current issue of the New Yorker has an article by staff writer Adam Gopnik, who spent part of his childhood up north, titled, "We Could Have Been Canada: Was the American Revolution such a good idea?" The notion that liberals hate America is an intellectually lazy ad hominem attack indulged by…

Since publishing its debut column by Bret Stephens, the New York Times has been under siege by angry readers posting screenshots on social media of them canceling their subscriptions. It seems like just a few months ago, subscribing to the Times and even buying its newsroom pizza —you know, in…

The news that former national security adviser Susan Rice was responsible for "unmasking" the identities of associates of President Trump in government surveillance reports sent shockwaves through Washington. But almost as newsworthy was the identity of the man who got the scoop: vociferous Trump…

I wanted to say something almost as soon as I heard that legendary National Review editor Kate O'Beirne had passed, and I regret it's taken a few days. When I heard the shocking news Sunday, I was already scrambling to get to another funeral out of state. It turns out that death is also what…

The New York Times has a long story about the role FBI chief James Comey played in shaping last year's election. Buried well into the piece is this bombshell:

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has been in the news recently because a source in the intelligence community informed him that Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was behind the "unmasking" of Trump campaign associates in intelligence reports, which may have led to other…

Rick Perlstein is a respected historian, and not without reason. Though he is an outspoken man of the left, his first book, Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, earned praise from the right for being a well-researched and relatively nuanced account of a…

During the Bush administration, the popular protest refrain was “Bush lied, people died." It's true that a major justification for the Iraq war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of so-called weapons of mass destruction, a catch-all phrase for biological and chemical weapons, as well as…

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster delivered remarks in Florida today to give some background on the strikes against Syria Thursday. He made one curious comment that raises a lot of troubling questions:

According to a recent headline from Reuters, "U.S. intelligence agencies suspect Assad did not turn over all chemical weapons stockpile." The evidence of the recent chemical attack in Syria makes that declaration little more than stating the obvious. However, back in January in an in interview with…

First of the Month, a leftist website, has a provocative column up titled, "Trumpism on the Left: Stephen F. Cohen and The Nation Magazine." Author Eugene Goodheart serves up a really interesting reminder that The Nation, which is nominally opposed to Trump and everything he stands for, has been…

Bloomberg's Eli Lake dropped a bombshell on Monday: Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was responsible for "unmasking" the identities of Trump officials in intelligence intercepts, and spreading this information around the government.

A few days ago, Sen. Tim Kaine tweeted the following about Judge Neil Gorsuch:

One of the more prescient essays in recent years is Jody Bottum's "The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas," which I'm proud to say was published in THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The essay posits that religious ideas are transforming politics as we know it, only instead of the hand-wringing about the Moral…

In the current issue of The Atlantic, Peter Beinart has an essay arguing that the decline in religiosity among American voters is what allowed for the election of Donald Trump and contributes to the bitter state of American politics:

Iowa representative Steve King is receiving a torrent of criticism right now for tweeting, in support of controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders, "Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."

Health care legislation proposed by Republicans to replace Obamacare has received a barrage of criticism from outside conservative groups, as well as a number of prominent members of Republicans' own caucus, such as Sen. Mike Lee. Many have speculated that the current bill is dead on arrival.

Amid Thursday’s over-hyped brouhaha about Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador, a curious detail emerged. In Sessions's recusal memo, it was explained who at the Justice Department would be handling any investigations into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. "Consistent with…

After years of campaigning on the need to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans in Congress are in disarray about what to do now that voters have empowered them to do just that. In his address to Congress on February 28, President Donald Trump helpfully exercised some leadership by letting…

A lot can be said about President Trump's speech Tuesday night, in terms of content and rhetoric. There's certainly much to be said about policy—Will Trump endorsing tax credits have an effect on Congress's Obamacare plans? Will Republicans come around to actually endorsing paid family leave?—but…

I keep hammering this point home, but the media seem obdurately unwilling to come to terms with the fact they have little credibility with the American people, and Trump voters especially. This situation is not helped by the fact they keep blowing stories on President Trump badly and they are…

The selection of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be President Trump's new National Security Advisor has received near universal praise. But understanding why McMaster is highly regarded is another matter altogether. Here's list of illuminating articles on McMaster that helps explain why he's one of the…

On September 30, Donald Trump tweeted in his inimitable style, “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying 'sources said,' DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!"

In the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, I have a piece on the problems of a media almost totally reliant on anonymous leaks to cover the Trump administration. This is obviously a huge part of the scandal surrounding Michael Flynn's resignation. As I note in the piece, "it's remarkable to…

On September 30, Donald Trump tweeted in his inimitable style, “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying 'sources said,' DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!"

For months now, there's been a major environmental protest over the Dakota Access pipeline. From the beginning the protest was based on questionable environmental and legal justifications. Pipelines are a safer mode of energy transport relative to other methods currently being used, and over 99…

In his excellent rundown of yesterday's ruling by the Ninth Circuit refusing to reinstate President Trump's immigration executive order, National Review's David French noted something rather curious about the court's rationale. In essence, the court said that Trump's campaign rhetoric was an issue…

The Telegraph recently reported the horrifying news that a doctor in Holland had been cleared of charges after she drugged an elderly woman suffering from dementia, had her family hold her down, and killed her. The laws in Holland are such that what occurred falls under the rubric of “euthanasia."…

A new poll shows that President Trump's controversial executive order on immigration is not unpopular:

I was at the gym yesterday catching up on the latest Hardcore History podcast—seriously, Dan Carlin is national treasure—and I noticed something. According to the iTunes charts, one of the ten most popular podcasts in the country right now is produced by the Washington Post. It's about Donald…

The Telegraph recently reported the horrifying news that a doctor in Holland had been cleared of charges after she drugged an elderly woman suffering from dementia, had her family hold her down, and killed her. The laws in Holland are such that what occurred falls under the rubric of “euthanasia."…

Reuters commissioned a poll about President Trump's executive order that caused so much controversy over the weekend. Here are the results:

For years now this magazine has been arguing that civil service reform is a necessary condition for fixing a myriad of America's problems. When the IRS starts politically targeting people and the VA's incompetence is killing veterans, and both are almost entirely resistant to the efforts by…

In between keeping tabs on the Trump administration's mess-up over its executive order on immigration, I spent some time over the weekend reading. I don't have the best track record with New Year's resolutions, but so far I'm ahead of schedule on my plan to read the complete works of Shakespeare.…

The fourth quarter economic growth numbers are in, and they are ugly:

Today, on the day of the annual March for Life, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. LifeNews reports:

The State Department's senior management team has all resigned, reports the Washington Post's Josh Rogin:

Over the course of the last year or so, many Trump supporters have pointed to the string of unlikely victories that propelled him to the White House and argued that he was playing three-dimensional chess. I think the temptation to consider Trump a tactical genius should be avoided. For every…

Here's the problem in a nutshell: President Trump thinks the media are out to destroy him. The media think they're holding him accountable. Neither Trump nor the media can tell the difference between these two things. In his most recent column, Ross Douthat rightly worries that this dynamic is…

On its way out the door, the Obama Education Department quietly released the results of its $7 billion investment in the School Improvement Grants program, "the largest federal investment ever targeted to failing schools," according to the Washington Post. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had…

The Washington Post's "fact check" of Donald Trump's inaugural address is a pretty perfect distillation of one of the most egregious aspects of "fact checking." It kind of pains me to say this, because while I have serious problems with other fact-checking organizations that are institutionally…

Perhaps there are a few relevant historical touchstones, but President Donald J. Trump—typing those words still feels surreal—delivered an inaugural address unlike any any other. Inaugural speeches are typically vehicles for unity and uplift. Even Abraham Lincoln, on the verge of civil war,…

As journalistic bombshells go, CNN’s January 10 report on President Trump was explosive: "Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump,…

According to The Hill, Trump officials are preparing an ambitious plan to cut spending and shrink the size of the federal government. In a nutshell, this is the plan:

Among the more than 200 commutations handed out yesterday, President Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a member of Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group advocating Puerto Rican independence. He is set to be released May 17.

Over at Fox News, the headline blares: "Clinton Global Initiative to lay off employees, shut down amid dwindling donations." Let's pause for a moment and contemplate why donations to the overarching Clinton Foundation would be dwindling. It's almost as if it were really a vehicle for influence…

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There are all manner of principled reasons that someone—especially a Democratic senator—might oppose Alabama senator Jeff Sessions becoming the next attorney general. (Indeed, a number of prominent conservative voices have even wondered aloud about Sessions's enthusiasm for civil asset forfeiture.)

Thursday's New York Times has a report on how the highly suspicious dossier alleging that Donald Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence agents came into existence. Among the other interesting revelations was that the dubious opposition research report was put together by the research firm…

President-elect Trump's pick for education secretary just had her nomination hearings delayed a week, but the media aren't wasting any time lining up breathless attacks on Betsy DeVos. At Politico, there's this astonishing headline: "DeVos' donations spark questions about her stance on campus…

Senator Jeff Sessions begins confirmation hearings on Tuesday to become the next attorney general. Since President-elect Donald Trump nominated the Alabama Republican to the post in November, critics have resurrected old allegations that Sessions is racist. The allegations were first made in the…

Less than a fortnight after his successor was elected, Barack Obama got to work on shaping his legacy. "I'm extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations," he said. On January 1, White House consigliere Valerie…

Vox interviewed President Obama on Facebook Live Friday. He discussed health care, along with the doomed fate of his health care law. One of the more interesting things he had to say was this:

The Washington Post reports that House Republicans have revived an obscure rule that could prove to be the most significant civil service reform in decades:

Urban strivers like to insist suburbia is a soul-deadening place to warehouse failed ambition. I, however, feel no need to defend my choice of safer streets, lower taxes, better schools, and local officials who are misguided rather than criminal. In fact, when my wife and I finally abandoned…

Less than a fortnight after his successor was elected, Barack Obama got to work on shaping his legacy. “I'm extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations," he said. On January 1, White House consigliere Valerie…

The crosstabs of the latest YouGov poll show that the majority of Democrats have embraced a reading of the November election that is conspiratorial and false:

So long as everyone expected a Hillary Clinton victory in November's presidential election, high-minded rhetoric ruled the day at the White House. Michelle Obama's quote from the Clinton campaign trail—"When they go low, we go high"—became something of a mantra. Initially, Barack Obama even spoke…

After initially promising to respond to Barack Obama's recent actions against Russia for meddling in American politics, Vladimir Putin is now saying he won't respond in kind to the Obama administration's decision to expel Russian diplomats and shut down Russian facilities in America:

To fill the position of U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Donald Trump has nominated David Friedman, an accomplished lawyer and an adviser to Trump on Israeli issues. Friedman is something of a political outsider, but in a Trumpian world, that may actually be an asset. And like Trump, he has something of…

Law and order became a flash point in this year's presidential election. And it looks like voters were not wrong to have some anxiety about rising crime—2015 was the first year that saw an increase in homicides in a decade, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting a significant uptick in homicides…

In an interview with NPR Monday, President Obama offered some advice for President-elect Trump: Don't become overly reliant on unilateral executive actions that can be easily undone by your successor. "My suggestion to the president-elect is, you know, going through the legislative process is…

In City Journal, Kay Hymnowitz has a must read essay on the how the media, which are increasingly comprised of educated women, missed the boat on Trump's support among women so badly:

Despite a heavy campaign to sway—even harass—Republican electors in, the only really unpredictable about Monday's Electoral College vote was that more Democratic electors defected from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump. Per Politico, Clinton advisers were not happy with even more votes of no…

Over at the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein has the must-read health care policy story of the day. Klein's spoken to several legislative aides about the GOP plans to repeal Obamacare:

It's come to this. Facebook has been so bullied over the "fake news" narrative since the election that they're actively appointing a panel of censors to police speech on Facebook:

Tom Wheeler, the Democratic chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has announced he will resign at the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential term, per Bloomberg. With Wheeler gone, Republicans will have a 2-1 majority on the FCC.

The latest Fox News poll shows that Donald Trump has been growing on people since the election:

The Clinton campaign of 2016 will surely go down in history as having made some of the most incredible strategic mistakes in the history of American politics. And we're still learning just how bad it was—a Politico report Wendesday morning contains this shocking detail:

After spending the entire election railing against Hillary Clinton and siphoning votes from her, Green party candidate responded to Donald Trump's victory by demanding a recount—but only in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, three states Trump narrowly won where reversing the results would…

"Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month's presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News," according to a report today in the Detroit newspaper. "Detailed…

For years now, the Republican party has promised to “repeal and replace" Obamacare. Now that voters have delivered Republicans control of the White House and Congress and they can make good on that promise, suddenly they are singing a different, decidedly off-key, tune: "Repeal and delay."

On November 16, United States District Judge Ed Kinkeade ordered Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey and New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman to be deposed by ExxonMobil lawyers in December. The two are further subject to legal discovery from ExxonMobil's legal team. These are…

Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." As you can imagine, lots of people were outraged by this insane claim. But I don't know which is more insane: Trump's assertion of millions of fraudulent votes…

On November 16, United States District Judge Ed Kinkeade ordered Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey and New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman to be deposed by ExxonMobil lawyers in December. The two are further subject to legal discovery from ExxonMobil’s legal team. These are…

Please see full update below.

Three-term U.S. House member Mike Pompeo of Kansas has been selected by Donald Trump to head the Central Intelligence Agency. A cursory glance at his biography shows he's eminently qualified. Pompeo was first in his class at West Point, served as an Army officer during the cold war in Europe, and…

The most crushing defeat for Democrats on November 8 was quite obviously Hillary Clinton’s. The party's next most significant loss, however, may well be that of Brad Avakian. He was an obscure candidate for what might seem to be a relatively inconsequential position. But as it turns out, Oregon's…

Nebraska senator Ben Sasse has come under fire for this tweet:

"It was around 9:20 p.m. when conventional wisdom died," wrote the Wall Street Journal's Neil King on election night. That was the moment when the New York Times's website began projecting that a Donald Trump victory was more likely than not, and it became abundantly obvious that the presidential…

Since Hillary Clinton's crushing defeat last week, there have been a lot of stories about Clinton campaign hubris. Specifically, the Democrats seemed to badly whiff on a lot of campaign fundamentals: don't nominate someone under FBI investigation who has no retail political skills; have a clear…

"It was around 9:20 p.m. when conventional wisdom died,” wrote the Wall Street Journal's Neil King on election night. That was the moment when the New York Times's website began projecting that a Donald Trump victory was more likely than not, and it became abundantly obvious that the presidential…

One of the big arguments made by Donald Trump and his supporters was that the Republican nominee was capable of redrawing the electoral map. Specifically, they said, Trump would turn out the vote in rustbelt states that hadn't voted reliably GOP in decades. A lot of people found the suggestion that…

Over the weekend, New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro wrote the following squib, "In 1 Unscripted Moment, Hillary Clinton Finds Joy in the Rain," which for reasons both unsurprising and only known to the editors, the Grey Lady saw fit to print:

In late October, a jury in Oregon acquitted Ammon Bundy and six codefendants for illegally occupying a building in the federal Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in a remote eastern part of the state. The protest, the subject of national news coverage in January, was in support of local ranchers…

As if America isn’t suffering from enough anxieties in 2016, you may have noticed the country is gripped by a nationwide epidemic of creepy clown sightings. In fact, someone in a clown costume carrying an axe was recently spotted in a park a few miles from my house. This isn't technically illegal,…

Throughout the 2016 campaign, there's been quite a lot of anguish about how to cover Donald Trump. It was collectively decided that his dishonesty necessitated extraordinary measures to inform the public he was a yuge liar. CNN started calling him a liar regularly in the chryon underneath their…

Last week I noted that DNC head Donna Brazile denied that she leaked questions to Hillary Clinton in advance of a Democratic primary debate. The denials of Brazile, who was working at CNN at the time, were particularly bizarre in the face of a leaked email showing her giving Clinton's team a…

Reports have it that Hillary Clinton is considering Joe Biden for secretary of state in her administration. The bench of popular, high profile Democrats isn't exactly deep these days and Biden has always been particularly interested in foreign policy, so on a superficial level recruiting Biden for…

Around every election, basic cable stations dust off their copies of All the President’s Men and start airing it. For better or for worse, Watergate is still central to modern politics and especially modern journalism. It's encouraging, of course, that we still want to believe no American,…

Among the revelations from the hacked John Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks is quite a bit of evidence of media malpractice. But perhaps the most damning bit involves interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile:

On March 5, 2015, John Podesta, former White House chief of staff and longtime Clinton family confidant, received an email from his daughter. “I'm heading back to NY tonight. Any chance you're staying in nyc b/c of weather (or scandal)?" she asked. Podesta responded, "What scandal? A few e-mails…

In a rather unorthodox move, the Donald Trump campaign sent a press release Tuesday afternoon with an acknowledgement that Trump was unlikely to win the election.

Monday morning, House speaker Paul Ryan did something that was unthinkable in the context of an ordinary presidential campaign, but inevitable in this one: He told GOP members of the House that he was no longer going to defend Trump in the wake of the leaked tape of Donald Trump lewdly discussing…

In an interview with the Nieman Lab this week, New York Times editor Dean Baquet was asked about how the media are struggling to cover Donald Trump. He noted that this is not the first time during the course of a presidential campaign that the media has had hard time combat untruths, except that…

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine—then a former governor and candidate for the Senate—was asked in 2012 what he would do about illegal immigration. Kaine responded that he would require illegal immigrants to identify themselves and force them to pay a hefty fine that would be used to…

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has released a letter addressed to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. In it, he asks Lynch a number of pointed questions about "side agreements" given to the Hillary Clinton aides who were also given immunity for cooperating in the email…

Voters have a pretty low opinion of the media. Only 19 percent of Americans have a favorable view of them, according to one recent NBC News poll. There are a lot of reasons for why that is the case, but one that shouldn't be overlooked is that the media don't hide their contempt for voters. Take…

I have long pointed out that PolitiFact is objectively biased. Surveys done by the University of Minnesota and George Mason University have shown that the supposedly impartial "fact checking" news organization rates Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims and twice as…

From the Washington Times:

One can make a lot of arguments about whether or not Donald Trump scored any points in Monday night's debate, but one thing that's hard to say is that Trump substantively articulated any sort of conservative policy vision for America.

Prior to Monday night, the closest thing to a debate between the presidential candidates was the town hall on national security issues hosted by Matt Lauer three weeks prior. Though the candidates didn't share a stage, Lauer asked Hillary Clinton some specific questions about her email scandal, as…

Leading up to Monday's debate, Hillary Clinton, her surrogates, and no shortage of media figures, demanded that Trump be fact checked during the debate. And they wanted Trump fact checked in real time—even if it meant moderator Lester Holt interrupt him.

Tevi Troy, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributor, historian, and veteran of the George W. Bush White House, has a new book out—Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office. The book is a fascinating look at a crucial, and sadly overlooked, aspect of policymaking.…

Within a few hours on September 17, a pressure cooker bomb exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York injuring 31 people, a man stabbed 10 people in a Minnesota mall, and bombs were found near the site of a Marine Corps charity race in New Jersey. The following Monday morning, White House…

In this video conference of the Laborers' International Union of North America, Hillary Clinton actually asks a curious rhetorical question that indicates even she is frustrated by her ineffective campaign.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the two least liked presidential candidates since the advent of modern polling. But tellingly, there is one force in politics that voters hate even more—the news media.

Over the last few days, the Clinton campaign's been on the defensive. The reason is James Asher, the former Washington bureau chief of McClatchy, has publicly claimed that Clinton aide and confidant was spreading the rumor that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to be…

There are plenty of reasons why, after years of spreading the conspiracy theory, Donald Trump should not be given a pass after his sudden public disavowal of previous claims that President Obama was born in Kenya. However, the media are zeroing in on Trump's assertion Hillary Clinton is responsible…

On Wednesday, Labor Secretary Perez was asked by a reporter about a study done by the American Enterprise Institute on the District of Columbia's minimum wage hike. D.C. raised its minimum wage to $10.50 an hour last July. According to AEI, following the mandatory wage increase, D.C. saw the loss…

The Yale Daily News recently published a guest column by C. Wallace Dewitt, class of 2003, noting that next year marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift. If the connection between the famous satirist and contemporary life at one of America's most revered—but rapidly…

At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank has a column that takes on the rather incredible task of defending Hillary Clinton's remarks that half of Donald Trump supporters consist of "a basket of deplorables." According to Milbank, not only is Clinton right, she's being too generous:

DCLeaks.com, a website with reported ties to Russian intelligence, has released hacked emails from former secretary of state Colin Powell. This morning, the New York Times reported that Powell wrote Trump was a "national disgrace" in the emails. Well, it turns out he also doesn't think very highly…

The press, not to mention millions of Americans, were understandably annoyed by the Hillary Clinton campaign's misleading, bordering on dishonest, claim she had merely "overheated" Sunday, after she had to be dragged into a van after apparently fainting. The general consensus is that had the…

At the end of August, incoming University of Chicago freshmen received a letter from dean of students Jay Ellison, accompanied by a short monograph by a Chicago history professor on academic freedom. The letter, in part, read:

Earlier tonight, the NCAA announced it was pulling seven different collegiate championship events out of North Carolina this year. The NCAA's actions were prompted by North Carolina's law that stops local governments from passing ordinances forcing businesses to allow biological men into women's…

At the end of August, incoming University of Chicago freshmen received a letter from dean of students Jay Ellison, accompanied by a short monograph by a Chicago history professor on academic freedom. The letter, in part, read:

There are many deplorable assertions in the Washington Post's editorial Friday excusing Hillary Clinton's criminal conduct, but let's just start with this:

Wednesday night, NBC hosted a presidential forum on issues related to national security and the military where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were interviewed and took selected questions from military personnel in attendance. Today host Matt Lauer served as moderator.

During Barack Obama's tenure in the White House, he has stacked the deck at the National Labor Relations Board with officials sympathetic to unions. (At one point, a unanimous Supreme Court decision ruled that Obama's recess appointments to the board were illegal.) The NLRB has in turn issued all…

Last month, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton "lacks the mental and physical stamina" to fight the war against terror. His surrogates followed up by also intimating that Hillary Clinton's health problems have affected her job performance. The Clinton supporters and the media were quite disdainful…

Recently, Indiana's Child Services were called in to deal with a 7-year-old boy who came to school one day with 36 bruises on his body. His mother has been charged with child abuse. The mother's lawyer, for puzzling reasons, is asking for the case to be dismissed under the state's Religious Freedom…

According to ABC News, Hillary Clinton has reached a new high in unpopularity. In their latest poll, 56 percent of Americans view Clinton unfavorably, up 6 percentage points in three weeks. Also notable is that Clinton is underwater with women, and her general unpopularity with other key…

A couple of years ago, THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted that American business interests and the media cover up China's human rights abuses. It contains this anecdote, which seems relevant in light of the recent and long overdue scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation:

Over the weekend, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem at the beginning of an NFL preseason game. Predictably, this touched off a firestorm after Kaepernick explained at a press conference after the game that this was done to protest injustice in…

As the Republican legislatures have tried to implement voter ID laws in recent years, the media have cried foul. Aside from the predictable charges of racism, the main argument is that such laws are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

As of Wednesday night, these are the presidential candidates voters will choose from on Minnesota's ballot in November: