Obama

“Time is a flat circle.”

The Obama policy of engagement failed. Bring back the stick.

"It's easy to look at what’s happening in Washington DC and despair. That’s why I carry a little plastic Obama doll in my purse. I pull him out every now and then to remind myself that the United States had a progressive, African American president until very recently. Some people find this…

It is a conceit of the Trump administration that its foreign policy is entirely different from that of Barack Obama. Even in an otherwise conciliatory State of the Union address, Trump strove to set himself apart from Obama, touting his own policy of “maximum pressure” on North Korea as an example…

The new documentary The Final Year records the ups, the downs, the smiles, the frowns of President Obama’s foreign policy advisers during their last months in office. It was made for HBO but it won’t hit the small screen until later this year. For the moment it’s playing in a few theaters in Obama…

FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is stepping down from his post at the FBI, NBC News first reported Monday.

The American left has always been more comfortable with domestic policy than foreign. Progressives are happy to talk about injustice at home. But what about injustice abroad? Are there circumstances in which the United States can use its power and influence to advance justice or to check repression…

For those willing to take it seriously, the question of Trump-ian national security and foreign policy has always been the extent to which the disruptive if not incendiary rhetoric of Donald Trump, the man, would be matched by a Trump administration effort to remake U.S. policy in accordance with…

For the vast edifice of baloney that is social psychology, there’s been good news and bad news lately. The good news is that Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize. Thaler is the foremost evangelist for behavioral economics—the parasitic discipline that uses the findings of social psychology to…

To many of those commenting on Donald Trump’s maiden address to the United Nations, especially if otherwise disturbed by the president’s character, his emphasis on state sovereignty was a welcome dose of diplomatic normalcy. For example, David Ignatius of the Washington Post found this theme…

To many of those commenting on Donald Trump’s maiden address to the United Nations, especially if otherwise disturbed by the president’s character, his emphasis on state sovereignty was a welcome dose of diplomatic normalcy. For example, David Ignatius of the Washington Post found this theme…

The Trump White House has yet to roll out its much-anticipated, comprehensive, government-wide Iran policy review, but administration principals have met over the last few weeks to iron out details regarding the nuclear deal with Iran, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. On…

The Trump White House has yet to roll out its much-anticipated, comprehensive, government-wide Iran policy review, but administration principals have met over the last few weeks to iron out details regarding the nuclear deal with Iran, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. On…

The effort to repeal and replace Obamacare isn’t quite dead. It will officially expire on September 30 without any further congressional intervention. According to guidance handed down by the Senate parliamentarian just before Labor Day, the end of the federal fiscal year is when this year’s budget…

Last week the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., removed from its website a study absolving the Obama administration of any blame for its inaction in the face of the Syrian genocide. The study had been scheduled for release amid much hoopla at a September 11 event hosted by the U.S.…

The Trump administration will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Obama-era directive that provided work permits and protection from deportation for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children, after a six-month window, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced…

The war in Afghanistan is nearly 16 years old. It is the longest in our nation’s history. Many Americans wonder why our soldiers are still there. This widespread frustration is shared by our commander in chief. The Trump administration has not yet announced its plans for Afghanistan in large part…

The war in Afghanistan is nearly 16 years old. It is the longest in our nation’s history. Many Americans wonder why our soldiers are still there. This widespread frustration is shared by our commander in chief. The Trump administration has not yet announced its plans for Afghanistan in large part…

For a symbolic issue, the Keystone pipeline has sure caused a lot of damage—to Canadian-American relations, to Democrats, to President Obama. And it feeds, underscores, or reflects a variety of political divisions, some of them quite bitter.

Perhaps you too have been wondering why it is that President Obama is always, always telling us who we are as Americans and who we are not. Obviously, why he does this is a complicated question. And I guess “always” is an exaggeration. Frequently, though—he does it very frequently.

With his aggressive executive action on immigration, President Obama has struck a constitutional nerve in the body politic. The first lawsuit challenging the president’s action was filed last week by a coalition of 18 states led by Texas. Oklahoma is about to file, and other states may do so as…

Hillary Clinton officially secured the Democratic party’s nomination for president last week, placing her one step closer to the job she has been doggedly pursuing for almost 20 years.

Last week, President Barack Obama’s administration dismissed reports of Iranian support for al Qaeda as the product of fevered minds. Claims of collaboration between the Islamic regime and the terrorist organization are little more than "baseless conspiracy theories," an Obama administration…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent outburst against Donald Trump has been roundly criticized by people of all political stripes. Insofar as her comments suggested a clear bias about cases that could come before the Supreme Court, they were clearly a mistake and a departure from the norms of Court…

The Obama administration has sanctioned three senior al-Qaeda members operating in Iran just weeks after dismissing reports of cooperation between the global terror organization and the Islamic Republic, deepening criticism from experts and lawmakers that the administration is seeking to downplay…

Last month a federal district judge in Wyoming invalidated an Interior Department rule setting stricter standards for hydraulic fracturing ("fracking," in commin parlance) on public lands. The decision dealt a blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, and news coverage focused on…

The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union Thursday, spurring the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and a drop in markets, as well as praise—or resigned acceptance—from major American political figures.

Barack Obama’s habit of avoiding Islamic nomenclature and highlighting American gun violence whenever Muslim terrorists strike is surely, in part, a product of his fear of anti-Muslim xenophobia in the United States. Before the rise of Donald Trump, Americans on the right might have scoffed at that…

"Why aren’t we talking this week about bringing this Congress together on an issue like making sure that individuals who are on the terrorist watch list can't buy guns?" Connecticut senator Chris Murphy asked that question shortly before he filibustered for gun control measures on June 15. A few…

"That’s the good thing: As a president I can do whatever I want." Those are President Obama's words. He may have meant it as a joke, but it's true enough: He, or any president, can do whatever he wants, even unwise things—provided they are legal.

Hillary Clinton said Friday that the unemployment rate under President Obama, which dropped to its lowest point in May since 2007, was "disappointing."

President Barack Obama extolled hip Nordic innovations such as Angry Birds, electronic music by Avicii, and Legos during a welcoming ceremony for leaders from the region Friday.

Hillary Clinton was stunned Monday when a small business owner told her that the cost of her health insurance had increased nearly two fold.

Here’s the read-out from Senator Grassley's office, on his breakfast this morning with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland:

Monday morning, Comfortably Smug tweeted this picture of President Obama standing in front of a mural of Che Guevara during his visit to Cuba.

To hear some on the left tell it, the Supreme Court would be hamstrung if it had to function for a year or more without a ninth justice. What to do in the event of a 4-4 tie? This would not have been viewed as a problem, however, by America's Founders, who created a Court with an even number of…

A quartet of Illinois lawmakers have put forward a bill to amend the State Commemorative Dates Act and declare President Barack Obama’s birthday a legal holiday. Under the legislation, August 4 would not only be a day off for Illinois state employees, it would be an occasion "to hold appropriate…

President Obama says he soon will nominate someone to fill the vacancy opened by the unexpected death of Supreme Court associate justice Antonin Scalia. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says his chamber will block any nominee the president sends up.

In few cases in its long history has the Supreme Court had occasion to interpret Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which provides that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This year it may have another. We'll know by the end of the Court's term in June,…

Early last Wednesday, Iran released the ten American sailors it had detained to coincide with President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. The administration understood clearly that the Iranians were both trying to ruin Obama's victory lap and sending a message—on the eve of…

On January 5, President Obama announced various executive actions to tighten gun control measures. Most of the news led with the fact that Obama cried during the press conference. The Scrapbook takes no stand on whether the tears were sincere. We believe the president cares about victims of gun…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on President Obama's recently announced executive actions on gun control.

With a little more than a year left in his presidency, Barack Obama has lately been in an elegiac mood, projecting a certain nervous confidence—"I've got 12 months left to squeeze every ounce of change I can while I'm still in office"—as well as reflecting on the lessons of experience. Most of his…

Throughout the debate over the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration insisted that its approach to brokering a deal with the mullahs is guided by a simple principle: "verification, not trust." Of course, by the time a deal was…

Let's begin with the conclusion: Barack Obama is releasing dangerous terrorists against the recommendations of military and intelligence professionals, he's doing so at a time when the threat level from radical Islamists is elevated, and he is lying about it. He is lying about how many jihadists he…

President Obama spent the weeks leading up to the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks talking about how ISIS was contained and shaming those who think the government won't do a good job screening the thousands of Syrian refugees he insists on America taking in. When reality suddenly eviscerated…

Barack Obama says he wants the truth. On November 21, the New York Times reported allegations that military intelligence officials provided the president with skewed assessments that minimized the threat from ISIS and overstated the success of U.S. efforts against the group. The Times story was an…

In many ways, the reaction to the horrific attacks in Paris has been familiar. There were the expressions of solidarity: flowers at French embassies; social media avatars changed from silly selfies to photos of the French flag snapping defiantly in the wind; buildings across the Western world lit…

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during President Obama's tenure, went on the Kelly File last night to talk about the possible manipulation of ISIS intelligence. He said the investigation should "start at the top. Where intelligence starts and stops is at…

At the end of World War II, a gifted young British expert on Russia named Thomas Brimelow—later ambassador to Poland, but at the time reporting from Moscow—ventured that what the Soviet Union respected most about Great Britain was “our ability to collect friends.” Indeed, having allies in this…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, on President Obama's politically correct foreign policy.

In remarks a few days ago in Turkey, President Obama said this:

At the end of this month representatives of some 200 nations will gather in Paris for the opening of a United Nations-sponsored conclave to prevent the cataclysm that President Barack Obama, backed by the moral authority of Pope Francis, believes will befall the world if we do not slow the pace of…

Last week, the Obama White House moved to ensure Hezbollah’s ability to point 100,000 missiles at Israel. That’s not how they would describe it, of course. But it was the Obama administration—as U.S. officials are quietly letting on—and not Russia that invited Iran to participate in talks in Vienna…

Pope Francis’s synod on the family adjourned on Sunday, October 25, after an acrimonious three weeks. This assembly of bishops, like a similar one last year, was convened because the pope is interested in changing Catholic teaching on divorce, remarriage, and, to a lesser extent, homosexuality.

Last week, Senate and House Democrats threw a party to celebrate the adoption day of Obama’s Iran deal. Ninety days after the White House signed the deal in Vienna, Obama directed the United States government to lift sanctions on Iran, the Democrats listened to a string ensemble in Washington, and…

During Tuesday's Democratic debate, presidential candidate Jim Webb ripped the Iranian nuclear deal, adding that the deal will allow Iran "to move forward and eventually acquire a nuclear weapon." Watch:

On Monday, President Obama asked Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson about her faith:

It was the middle of the night in Washington, D.C.—the early morning of September 30, 2015, in Iraq—when a three-star Russian general walked into the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, announced that Russian jets would soon begin airstrikes in Syria, and demanded that the United States stop flying combat…

By any objective measure, Russia has made a strategic decision to challenge America for dominance in the Middle East. Despite depressed global oil prices and economic sanctions intended to curb his Ukraine adventurism, Vladimir Putin is pursuing an undisguised effort to expand Moscow’s military…

There has been speculation that John Kerry and Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif would be selected for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on the Obama foreign policy, and how our allies are reacting to it.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on what Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama have in common: they both want Iranian dominance in the Middle East.

On a recent Saturday afternoon in Washington, several hundred children with cancer and their families filled Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. They came from all over the country, and from Canada, to participate in a two-day program called CureFest for Childhood Cancer.…

In his weekly address on September 12, President Obama touted the Department of Education’s new “College Scorecard,” the latest, greatest tool to help high school students and their families make informed (dare we say educated?) decisions when picking a college. The website offers students a means…

It's been two weeks since a majority of Congress sought to register its disapproval of the Iran deal but fell short of the votes necessary to break a filibuster or override a presidential veto, and most politicians and commentators have moved on.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the Obama administration's Syria policy, and what Russia is doing there.

In defending the Iran nuclear deal to Congress, President Obama and his staff argued repeatedly that rejection would leave America in dire isolation at the United Nations. Obama can now relax. Having used slash-and-burn executive tactics to roll right over a dissenting majority in Congress and a…

Earlier this summer, we learned the Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that the intelligence on ISIS was manipulated. Analysts at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, formally complained to the IG that analysis contradicting the Obama administration’s narrative on ISIS was…

Even now with the Russians on the verge of combat operations in Syria, the White House still says it believes that they’re there to fight ISIS. John Kerry says that his Russian counterpart told him that the Russians are “only interested in fighting” the Islamic State. Other administration officials…

Disputes between the political appointees who run the Pentagon and the military officers who serve there are not unheard of, but the nastiness and public nature of the fight over women in combat being waged between Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and the Marines who answer to him is unprecedented…

The opposition British Labour Party, now led by a leftist who favors Hamas, wants Britain to withdraw from NATO because its expansion has antagonized Vladimir Putin, give up its nuclear deterrent, and declare an arms embargo against Israel, has appointed as his shadow chancellor, one John…

A photograph of a drowned 3-year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach after his family failed to find refuge from the war in Syria seems to have finally gotten the world’s attention. The conflict has been an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe for more than four years. A quarter of a million are…

Hillary Clinton has attacked Donald Trump because he didn't rebuke an audience member who asserted President Obama is a Muslim, and not American. 

The White House seems to think that Vladimir Putin’s Syria policy is a blunder of the first order. Recently, the Russians have deployed combat planes, tanks, ships, engineers, technicians, as well as special forces units to help sustain Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But that’s a bad idea, President…

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers, for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the…

Juneau, Alaska

‘It was $5, right?” I was at a convenience store in northern Missouri, filling up with gas, and the guy next to me was checking his gas budget with the lady in the passenger seat of his car. He was driving what might be the last K-car on the road. He noticed that I had overheard their conversation…

Last week the White House puffed its feathers when Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Democratic senator to come out in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran. Mikulski’s support ensures enough votes in Obama’s pocket to sustain a presidential veto on a resolution of disapproval, but it’s still not…

Two weekends ago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City held its annual monetary conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The left flew in hundreds of protesters donning green T-shirts that demanded “Higher Wages for America” and chanting, “We’re Fed Up.” The crowd was an assortment of college kids…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Iran deal, and his recent piece The Supporting Actors.

Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Brookings Institution Wednesday morning, took some hard jabs at the Obama administration, while expressing her support for the Iran nuclear deal. Among other things, Clinton said that the U.S. was

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Hillary Clinton's bad weekend and the Iran deal. 

The late great comedian Milton Berle, when introduced to an enthusiastically applauding audience, would hold up his left hand in a modest gesture as if to say thank you but that’s enough, and with his right hand held at waist level encouraged the audience to even wilder applause. President Obama…

Liberals and progressives go to great lengths to keep church and state separate. Just try to have religious schools share in a voucher or other government program that provides relief to students trapped by the teachers’ unions into failing schools. No can do. It violates the separation of church…

Former Obama hand Dan Pfeiffer does some player evaluations on the political scene and comes up with this regarding Hillary Clinton:

How might the United States end up in a boots-on-the-ground shooting war with Iran? 

President Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia during his recent trip to Africa, and the hotel bill for the president and his entourage totaled approximately $412,390.86 for the Ethiopia stay alone. A contract with the Hilton in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa was posted online recently:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on whether or not the Obama White House will throw Clinton under the bus.

In May, President Barack Obama donned a yarmulke and spoke in a Washington, D.C., synagogue. He reminded his audience that Jeffrey Goldberg, a member of the congregation, once called him the “first Jewish president.” He claimed to be flattered by the characterization. And perhaps he was—most Jews,…

President Obama is putting on the hard sell to market the nuclear deal he reached with Iran. On July 14, in announcing the agreement, he said: “This deal shows the real and meaningful change that American leadership and diplomacy can bring—change that makes our country and the world safer and more…

John Kerry is bullish on the Middle East. He believes that the Iran deal will make it possible for the White House and Tehran to tamp down wars in places like Syria and Yemen. And—who knows?—maybe even solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

President Obama defended the Iran deal at American University in Washington this week, inviting comparisons to President Kennedy’s address there in 1963. While some consider the allusion a masterstroke of political theater, the JFK comparison might not suit the president as well as he thinks.

From Agency France-Presse:

The Iran deal turns out to be so no good, so very bad, so awfully ugly, that there is a chance—an outside chance—that a congressional process accepted by the administration because it seemed to virtually guarantee the deal’s survival might actually kill it instead.

When the secretary of state says, as John Kerry did last week in his Senate testimony, that the Obama White House is “guaranteeing” Iran won’t have the bomb, you can be sure that—well, you can be pretty confident that he doesn’t mean it. And that someday soon he’ll pretend he never said it.

The original sin of President Obama, politically speaking, was pushing his health care plan through Congress with Democratic votes alone. For rejecting even a veneer of bipartisanship, he and Democrats have paid an enormous price.

Barack Obama is not popular. This plain and simple fact may surprise those who read only legacy journalists, who often elide this inconvenient truth. A recent Associated Press write-up is illustrative:

Despite little national coverage, scandals surrounding former NBA star and Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson have been intensifying over past few months. Monday's report at Deadspin is a good place to start -- things have gotten so bad that Johnson's allies are accusing a local paper that's done a lot…

President Obama’s deal with Iran is not even called an “agreement.” Technically, it’s a “joint comprehensive plan of action,” a mushy term adopted precisely to avoid the implication that it’s a formally binding agreement. In truth, it’s more like the sort of coordinated “plan of action” that…

President Obama had a moment of impressive moral clarity at his Iran press conference Wednesday. It was when he was asked about Bill Cosby.

One might think that after the last Iraq war Democrats would be wary of allowing intelligence to dictate policy. Yet that is effectively what Barack Obama has done with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in Vienna on July 14. The agreement with Iran is strategically premised on the…

In his first Inaugural Address, President Obama offered an open hand to the Iranian regime. On July 14, announcing the nuclear deal that is the culmination of that overture, he shook a closed fist at the American people. The president came out swinging—not at the regime in Tehran but at his…

‘Without this deal,” said President Obama on Tuesday, “there is no scenario where the world joins us in sanctioning Iran until it completely dismantles its nuclear program.” That was nothing new. Throughout the negotiations with Iran, “the world” has been one of the president’s favorite defenses…

The old New Yorker used to have a contributor named “Mr. Arbuthnot the Cliché Expert”—actually writer Frank Sullivan (1892-1976)—who, between 1935 and 1952, specialized in identifying and analyzing the puerile thoughts and hackneyed phrases of American politics and journalism. The Scrapbook has…

Would George W. Bush have negotiated and signed the JCPOA with Iran?  Even for those who (like me) worked in the Bush White House, that seems like a silly question. After all, who cares? Bush has been out of office for more than six years, and refrains from commenting on foreign affairs or from…

Years ago, a left-leaning reporter for a mainstream newspaper grossly exaggerated the crowd at one of her favorite protest rallies. When I pointed out the much lower crowd estimates by police and other sources, she responded with, “facts are the enemy of truth,” words from the mouth of Cervantes’…

Earlier today, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing to consider whether President Obama's pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., should be advanced to the Senate for a confirmation vote.

Is the world better off than it was eight years ago? 

It’s the summer of 2015, and the left is on the march. Or perhaps one should say—since the left presumably dislikes the militarist connotations of the term “march”—that the left is swarming. And in its mindless swarming and mob-like frenzy, nearly every hideous aspect of contemporary leftism is on…

"It was like an out-of-body experience,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says. He was talking about his congratulatory phone call from President Obama after Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) passed the Senate last week. “It was kind of fun.” McConnell enjoyed hearing the president castigate…

One week before the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a series of demands about the final terms. Among them: He called for an immediate end to all United Nations Security Council and U.S. economic sanctions on Iran; he said Iranian military…

The Obama White House thinks that when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program, we ought to let bygones be bygones. What’s past is past, and now it’s time to focus on the future. Sure, the administration once thought it was a problem that the Iranians refused to disclose their past nuclear…

A year ago the Islamic State first made headlines around the world by storming Mosul and conquering Iraq’s second-largest city. President Obama pledged to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the organization. Here we are a year later, and with ISIS now holding more territory—including other Iraqi…

William Butler Yeats sure had the Age of Obama right:

In his Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, President Obama seems to have taken it upon himself to update the greatest achievement in the history of the English language—the King James Bible. He was reaching for John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his…

There was a time when Democrats were free traders and getting trade treaties through Congress was a snap. No more. In the last quarter-century—with most Democrats having slipped into the protectionist camp—winning ratification has become difficult. Today it takes a majority of Republicans to pass a…

Let’s begin by doing something we don’t often do, and that is quoting the New York Times at some length. We do this because David Sanger’s report of Thursday, May 14, makes clear how mistaken are the premises underlying President Obama’s forthcoming Iran deal:

John Forbes Kerry is the 68th secretary of state of the United States of America. If you’re ever tempted to ponder American decline, or for that matter the decline of the West, you might pause to reflect that John Kerry was preceded in his august office by, among others, Thomas Jefferson, James…

At the top of our next president’s task list will be rescuing American foreign policy from the wreckage of the Obama years. The prevailing headlines detail a grim litany of new threats, each one emanating from an Obama administration policy failure. From the expansionist barbarity of the Islamic…

It was a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away: In July 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama made big, bold news by travelling to Berlin to – as The New York Times triumphantly recorded – “restore the world’s faith in strong American leadership and idealism.” With 200,000 Berliners waving…

As always, Winston Churchill said it best. Here he is on March 24, 1938, less than two weeks after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria:

Last week, the Obama administration urged Saudi Arabia to halt its air campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have wrested control of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The White House’s professed concern was that Riyadh’s Operation Decisive Storm was killing too many civilians.…

When President Obama visited Jamaica in early April, he held a town hall meeting with "Young Leaders of the Americas" at University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. The president made remarks and took questions for only about 75 minutes in the Assembly Hall building on the Mona campus of…

Hillary Rodham Clinton, quondam secretary of state and presumptive heir to the presidency 

The day President Obama believes relevant history began. Rather like the French revolutionaries who decreed that the establishment of their Republic be dated Year I of the French Republic. August 4, 1961 was the day on which Barack Hussein Obama arrived on this earth in Honolulu, Hawaii. Anything…

If there is one thing on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, it is that it is undesirable for countries other than the United States to possess nuclear weapons. For this reason, America’s nonproliferation policy has traditionally been characterized by strong bipartisanship. It is notable,…

Over the weekend, as he berated the Israeli government for its opposition to the proposed Iranian nuclear deal, President Obama attempted to strike a literary note. Condemning Jerusalem’s supposed flip-flopping on the merits of the deal, the president sarcastically said, “you know, consistency is…

Congress returns from its two week break on Monday. If it has any respect for itself, it will promptly schedule a vote on President Obama’s most recent veto.

Immediately after Israel’s March 17 election, Obama administration officials threatened to allow (or even encourage) the U.N. Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state and confine Israel to its pre-1967 borders. Within days, the president himself joined in, publicly criticizing not just…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the Obama administration's pending nuclear deal with Iran.

Just last week the White House boasted that President Obama is setting the agenda despite Republican control of the House and Senate. He’s in a stronger position now than before the midterm elections in November. “The White House is declaring victory over Washington,” according to Politico.

The Obama White House is enlisting all its allies to make its case for the bad nuclear deal with Iran that, say administration allies, is better than no deal. The alternative, they claim, is war. And to what purpose? Many nuclear experts, Middle East analysts, and journalists argue, after all, that…

King v. Burwell, on which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments March 4, is the most politically important case on the High Court’s docket this term. If the King petitioners win a decision in their favor, it could explode the massive 2010 federal health care overhaul known as Obamacare, by…

Iran is an opportunity, not a threat; it’s a potential partner, not an enemy.

Tel Aviv

I don't think very much of Vox.com and its journalistic standards. I've made the case against them before in detail, but the evidence of their general lack of professionalism is still piling up. Vox has a daily email newsletter written by Matthew Yglesias, and today's missive contains the following…

A half-century of estrangement is over, President Obama declared late last year, in a surprise announcement that he was transforming U.S. policy towards Cuba. Having broken the ice, the administration hopes that normalizing diplomatic relations and lifting the economic embargo will, as the recently…

Finally, a debate about Iran. Last week, 47 Republican senators released a public letter addressed to the leaders of the Iranian regime. The letter made what might have seemed a self-evident point: If the Obama administration reaches a deal with Iran, Congress will not be bound by parts of the deal…

President Obama is headed for disaster in the nuclear deal with Iran. The nearly completed agreement, as best we know, would allow Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure intact and its centrifuges churning out enriched uranium. The mullahs would be free to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons in as…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the President's nuclear deal with Iran, whether we'll learn more this weekend, and Hillary Clinton's speech to camp counselors.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on Obama's nuclear giveaway to Iran and why Netanyahu's victory won't stop the administration from pursuing a bad deal.

In an interview with Vice, Barack Obama struck his favorite pose -- that of disinterested, objective observer on the passing political scene. Asked about congressional resistance to cap and trade, our social-critic-in-chief responded:

On the day that Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was leaving for the United States to give what the Washington Post called “the most important speech of his life,” my grandchildren were watching Big Hero 6. When I heard the smallest of the animated characters say, “We didn’t set out to be super-heroes,…

President Obama wants explicit legislative authorization to use military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The administration has sent a draft of an AUMF to Congress, which has begun hearings that could last a while.

Just a few weeks ago, everybody thought Hillary Clinton would cruise to the Democratic nomination. But with recent revelations -- the private email account, the foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation -- where does she stand now?

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the Cotton Letter to Iran, the media, and its response.

My colleague Lee Smith has noted that both Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bob Menendez both suddenly found themselves in trouble just as the Obama administration was enduring heightened public scrutiny over their attempt to forge an agreement with Iran, and both may well have been voices of opposition.…

President Obama’s legacy is in jeopardy. The fates of his main achievements—Obamacare, his amnesty for five million illegal immigrants, the Dodd-Frank financial institution reforms—are now in the hands of the federal courts.

President Obama has ignored the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, faithfully repeating failed strategies and turning his back on successes. The pattern is so strange and striking, we can almost hear it trying to tell us something. The something is this: You cannot be a nationalist and a…

Last week it was reported that the White House and Iran may be moving toward a deal over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The proposed phased agreement, lasting 10-15 years, would initially attempt to freeze the program. But during the last years of the agreement, Iran would be allowed to…

Sometimes a speech is just a speech. Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech about Iran policy on March 3 will not be his first address to Congress. It will make familiar, if important, arguments. One might assume that, like the vast majority of speeches, it would soon be overtaken by events in Israel and the…

Barack Obama wants us all to simmer down about Iran. He wants Senator Bob Menendez, a fellow Democrat, and the donors he represents to butt out of the sanctions debate. He wants Republicans to quit crying wolf about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He wants the media to stop hyping terror threats.…

Scott Walker was never going to win fans among the faculty at the University of Wisconsin. Four years ago, Wisconsin professors were in the state capitol protesting the governor’s plans to limit public employee collective bargaining powers. But, boy, did he make enemies this month when he proposed…

Is Barack Hussein Obama wrong to avoid appending “Islamic,” “Muslim,” “Islamist,” or even “jihadist” to the terrorism that has struck the West with increasing ferocity since the 1990s? This question has at least two parts: Is the president historically correct to do this? And is he politically…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on his take on Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech, Iran policy, and Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech and its impact on President Obama's Iran strategy.

The Obama Administration’s defacto anti-ISIS partnership with Tehran is helping Iran’s Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimeni and Ayatollah Khamenei “Finlandize” Iraq. Not only does this damage U.S. interests in sustaining an independent and sovereign Iraq, but the Obama Administration’s apparent…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to a joint session of Congress, and the liberal democrats boycotting it.

Failing upwards is a Washington tradition, but even The Scrapbook was taken aback by the promotion of Jennifer Psaki from State Department spokesperson to White House director of communications. Psaki, along with her State Department colleague Marie Harf, had acquired quite the reputation for…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Hillary Clinton. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Elliott Abrams from the Council on Foreign Relations on his recent item "U.S. and Israel: The Manufactured Crisis."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Scott Walker and his battle with the D.C. press corps, all while President Obama capitulates to Iran.

The country’s incoming college students have been exhorted, repeatedly, to major in something “useful,” rather than something intellectual. The idea is that there is a split between “useful” majors, which teach a specific skill (like marketing, computer science, or architecture) and “useless”…

David Axelrod is the man who, more than any other, could be called Barack Obama’s brain (though Axelrod would be publicly horrified by the honorific, and would hasten to assure Valerie Jarrett that he has never been in communication with the editors of this magazine). In his new book, Axelrod…

President Obama’s claim to have disapproved of gay marriage until he changed his mind in 2012 has been exposed as a lie. It was a small, politically expedient lie, but it got a lot of attention last week. Meanwhile a bigger lie hovers over the Obama presidency like an avenging angel, unseen and…

There was a nugget in President Obama’s widely criticized speech at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month that hasn’t received the notice –- and, frankly, the opprobrium -- that it deserved. (In fact, only Salon.com of all places, seems to have glommed onto it.) Towards the end of his…

Republican senators Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, and Rand Paul have all been high profile opponents of the Obama administrations current plan to regulate the internet -- in particular, Lee has called the regulation a government "takeover" of the internet and says it amounts to a "a massive tax increase on…

From almost the moment President Obama assumed office, observers began calling attention to his unusual proclivity to use the pronoun I. In one of the earliest notices of this practice, an alarmed Terence Jeffrey of CNS News counted 34 I’s in the president’s speech on the federal rescue of General…

Democrats have moved to the left in the Obama era. And if the party’s base, President Obama, and Senator Elizabeth Warren have their way, they will move even further to the left in the next two years. Liberals will rejoice, but there’s a downside. The Democratic nominee will have a considerably…

On Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which really does merit a federal holiday, it’s worth noting that there is no federal holiday called “Presidents’ Day” — nor should there be.  The lone federal holiday in February is “Washington’s Birthday.”  (If only more Americans would call it that!)  Many states,…

At this point, not even the self-styled Wonk Class was staying up late in anticipation of the Obama Administration’s release of its long-overdue National Security Strategy (NSS), which has at last been published. The last one came out five years ago, and the president has been promising an update…

Don’t be confused by the Obama administration’s Iran policy, warns Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran on the Mosaic website. It may look like random ad-hocery, but writes Doran, “Obama does have a relatively concrete vision. When he arrived in Washington in 2006, he absorbed a set of…

Sorry I’m a little late. The National Association of Police Chiefs was being given a tour of the White House just when I was showing Joe Biden my new backswing—HANDS UP. They must have fired 600 rounds. The Blue Room—we’re renaming it the “Swiss Cheese Room.” Good thing they all made lousy shots.

If you skipped President Obama’s State of the Union address on TV last week, you missed something. It was long (61 minutes) and uninspiring. Yet as the Obama presidency enters its seventh year, the speech was revealing. Here are a few things we learned about Obama’s thinking.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Adam J. White on his blog post "The Constitution Doesn't Let President Close Congress's Doors to Israel."

Traditionally, the new year is a time for reflection on the year that ended and predictions about the one to come. Conservatives had an excellent 2014, as the Republican party gained control of the Senate, won more House seats than at any time since the Great Depression, and made historic gains in…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the new year, the College Football Playoff, Foreign Policy, and Politics.

On domestic issues, President Obama rarely leads and doesn’t like to negotiate. In his first two years in office, he didn’t have to do either. He was spoiled by having overwhelming Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. And he hasn’t gotten over it yet.

Last week’s announcement that the White House intends to restore normal diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba is part of Barack Obama’s larger project to overturn what he perceives to be wrongheaded, or at least outdated, foreign policies. From Obama’s perspective, the Cold War…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, his item "Castro, Cuba, Obama—and Iran".

There’s a lesson from President Obama’s first term that he should have learned long ago. It’s simple: On an issue that affects many millions of Americans, it’s best—even necessary—to have bipartisan support in Congress. Going forward in a purely partisan fashion is bound to cause national discord,…

It's not clear when (or whether) the Obama White House will conclude a final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. The extended deadline for the interim deal known as the Joint Plan of Action is set to expire November 24. And the president very much wants a deal that would cement his…

Move over, Barack Obama. The Republicans are now the party of hope—at least when it comes to Obama’s expected executive order on immigration.

One month short of his 78th birthday, and 27 years after his self-immolation, Gary Hart has been given a present of sorts by writer Matt Bai, who in All the Truth Is Out recasts the past as Hart wants to see it, a great man brought low by a change (for the worse) in the national zeitgeist that…

Let us now praise famous men, or at least one good federal judge, as some recent work of his demonstrates. Jeffrey Sutton is this judge, and he sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which includes the states of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Earlier this month he…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's newly announced executive actions on immigration policy and amnesty.

From time to time there comes a moment when a president is expected to say something meaningful about an event that has just occurred. President Obama faced such a moment last week after Republicans swept the midterm elections and captured the Senate. He had nothing interesting, much less…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes and why President Obama's rambling post-election press conference reveals that he has no idea what just happened.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the controversy over an anonymous U.S. official's comment that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a "chicken****".

A year before his first inauguration, Barack Obama laid out the objective of his presidency: to renew faith and trust in -activist government and transform the country. In an hourlong interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal on January 16, 2008, Obama said that his campaign…

President Obama has had to acknowledge two big lies of the Affordable Care Act: (1) You could keep your health insurance plan; and (2) the HealthCare.gov website would be fully operational at launch. Unless he acts with urgency, he will also be forced to apologize for assuring us that personal data…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the latest on ebola and the administration's response.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on ebola in the U.S., the administration's response, and how ebola is impacting close senate races in 2014.

How to introduce students to conservative thought? It’s hard. The colleges and universities aren’t interested. The media and popular culture are hostile. What if young Americans nonetheless become aware of the existence of such a thing as conservative thought? How to convey its varieties and…

The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig has the details of yet another damaging Obama scandal:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the latest on the airstrikes against ISIS and the efforts to discredit Leon Panetta after he criticized the White House on foreign policy in his new book.

I happened to be meeting with Senator Ted Cruz a few hours after President Obama’s United Nations speech Wednesday. We naturally started by discussing the president’s latest oratorical effort. Cruz’s judgment on the speech as a whole? “Unsurprising, but consistently disappointing.” On Obama on…

In Manhattan last Tuesday afternoon, The Scrapbook discovered what it’s like to get close to the president, and it stinks. We also now understand how to assemble a huge crowd to admire a presidential motorcade: You simply close 40 blocks of one of the busiest streets in the world. With typical…

Last week brought a reminder of what the United States has lost since Bob Gates and Leon Panetta left the Obama cabinet. Both are straight shooters with a centrist, hardheaded sensibility.