Washington

National Landing just made a huge mistake.

It takes experience to drain a swamp.

President Donald Trump was elected in 2016 in part on a pledge to “drain the swamp,” to eliminate the corruption that many Americans have come to believe dominates our politics. Here, Hillary Clinton served as a perfect foil, a stand-in for all the politicians who have gone to Washington to do good…

"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…

In this latest mega-episode, the Substandard discusses the works of director Paul Thomas Anderson—JVL reveals himself to be a PTA scholar. Sonny reviews Phantom Thread. Vic reveals his favorite bathroom in D.C. JVL is writing Eagles fanfiction. And Sonny still hates coconut.

Let's not kid ourselves: It’s a weird time in our nation’s capital.

Earlier this month, the Department of Education released the latest figures on high school graduation: After rising every year for five years, the national rate hit an all-time high of 84 percent in 2016. Good news, surely.

Sometimes The Scrapbook thinks that the D.C. city government exists solely so that Congress won’t be the most incompetent political entity in Washington. We’re no strangers to writing about the effects of terrible regulations, and we really have to give D.C. credit for cooking up this one: The city…

This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, filling in for Bill Kristol is Michael Warren, who talks with host Eric Felten about the multi-vehicle smash-up that was this week in Washington.

Leave to one side for a moment the debate over whether Confederate memorials, many of them more than a century old, should be pulled down as an act of civic and moral hygiene. Nearly everyone can agree that the memorials themselves are artistically accomplished. Some of them are overwrought, some…

When George Will was being packed off to graduate school, his father, a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, asked him what, or who, he wanted to be in life: Ted Sorensen, Isaiah Berlin, or Murray Kempton? All three men were closely identified with a public trade. Sorensen, as…

When George Will was being packed off to graduate school, his father, a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, asked him what, or who, he wanted to be in life: Ted Sorensen, Isaiah Berlin, or Murray Kempton? All three men were closely identified with a public trade. Sorensen, as…

The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner folded in on…

The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted last week when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on celebrating Christmas in Washington.

John McLaughlin was a Jesuit priest, unsuccessful Senate candidate in Rhode Island, and White House aide to Richard Nixon. But he won't be remembered for any of that because he did something a lot bigger. He changed TV political commentary and made it faster, funnier, and far more watchable—in…

It’s hard to decide which part of Donald Trump's Monday afternoon press conference in Washington was the most bizarre. There was the spectacle of holding the event in Trump's newest hotel, being constructed at a D.C. landmark, the Old Post Office Building. The sound system helped Trump's voice echo…

Amid the closure of 150 or so Walmarts across the country, the booming Washington, D.C., region did not escape without casualties. Two planned stores in poorer parts of town, east of the Anacostia river, will not be built.

The nation’s capital, a top terrorist target, has received new advice should it come under a Paris-style attack. Instead of waiting for police to arrive, D.C.’s police chief is advocating a more aggressive -- albeit unarmed -- approach.

So far in this campaign, Jeb Bush hasn’t said anything particularly memorable (if, that is, memory serves) but now he has come out with something pithy and quotable and certain to please one half the electorate and infuriate the other.

Mismanaging a baseball team will do it.  As James Wagner reports in the Washington Post:

Writing in the Washingtonian, Benjamin Freed sounds the alarm: Metro's Ridership Is Still Falling, and Fare Hikes Might Be the Only Way to Keep Its Revenue Up.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading his casual essay "Hangers On."

Say this for President Obama: His troll game is strong. During his opening remarks welcoming Pope Francis, he abandoned his “freedom to worship” language and instead said: “People are only free when they can practice their faith freely.” And that, “We in the United States cherish our religious…

Carly Fiorina tried to inspire the nation with a rift about how America is "being crushed by the weight, the power, the cost, the complexity, the ineptitude, the corruption of the federal government." She promised to fix that:

Bernie Becker of The Hill reports that:

The FAA is announcing that Washington, D.C. will be a "no drone zone" on July 4.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Erin Mundahl reading her casual essay "A Room of One's Own."

Neil S. Rodgers, a former D.C. government official, was sentenced Tuesday for his role in the misappropriation of $110,000 earmarked for D.C.'s Children at Risk and Drug Prevention Fund to cover a deficit for the 51st State Inaugural Ball for President Obama's inauguration in 2009. Rodgers, found…

Hillary Clinton misstated her location at a campaign event today in New Hampshire. Instead of saying New Hampshire, the presidential candidate said, "Here in Washington."

They are a lousy team with perhaps the worst owner in all of professional sports, but the Imperial City wants the Redskins nonetheless.  As Alex Gold and Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institute write:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Philip Terzian reading his casual essay "Their Money or Your Life."

During Christmas vacation 1968-69 I ran into a high school friend much wiser in the ways of the world than I. He had stumbled onto a curious job for the next few weeks— collecting the proceeds from a chain of bowling alleys in the Washington area, counting the loot, and delivering it to corporate…

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on his way to address a joint session of Congress.

Megan R. Wilson at the Hill writes that:

President Obama left the White House to lunch with Vernon Jordan. He's accompanied by Valerie Jarrett. 

While many critics skewer President Obama’s recent amnesty-granting executive action, D.C.’s municipal lawmakers have their own plans for the next battle on the immigration-citizenship front. Invoking considerations of fairness and justice against “anti-immigrant hysteria,” D.C. council member…

When to mention race and when not? My fellow journalists who covered the funeral of the woman who died in the D.C. Metro last week chose not to mention it. Perhaps they deemed it a distraction, too fraught a subject to bring up at a solemn, family time. My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that…

Growing up in Dallas, there is nothing better than living in Washington, D.C., on “Misery Monday”—the Monday after the Dallas Cowboys have whipped the Washington Redskins.  And believe me, yesterday was a whipping with the Cowboys defeating the Redskins 44-17. 

Having a problem with your Comcast cable? No problem--that is if you fall into the following categories: "congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians." Just talk to a Comcast lobbyist. 

Can be seen in plain focus through the prism of the Washington Redskins and their miscalculations (some would say “delusions”) about quarterback Robert Griffin III.  That, anyway, is the way Gabriel Baumgaertner writes it at Sports Illustrated:

The Washington Post reports that Marion Barry has died:

We have heard a lot about gridlock in Washington and the damage that it does.  The public, we are told, wants the people they elect and send there to “get something done.” And we will, no doubt, be hearing a lot more of the same thing no matter how the elections today turn out.  Big Republican win…

Last night’s contest between the Chicago Bears and the San Francisco 49ers, in that team’s brand new stadium, was hijacked by the zebras. More penalties than plays, it sometimes seemed. And the ratings were off a little but still good enough to beat the Miss America contest. But if a ratings slide…

The Washington Post editorial board was in favor of decriminalizing pot. But it is not in favor of legalizing it.

Scott Clement of the Washington Post reports that, on the question of what to call the NFL team identified with the city of Washington, D.C., a large majority is content to stick with the name “Redskins.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is joining five of his predecessors on Wednesday at a groundbreaking ceremony for the United States Diplomacy Center, a new 40,000 square foot facility dedicated to "bringing the story of American diplomacy to life." The "state-of-the-art museum and education…

The former constituents who returned Eric Cantor to the private sector have reason to think, He is who we thought he was. As Mario Trujillo of The Hill reports:

The big bill to reform Veterans Affairs will be signed tomorrow.  With, no doubt, much ceremony and patting of backs.  Washington has done it again.  Rescued the rest of us from … Washington.  

Writing at the New York Times, Thomas Edsall makes a provocative and counterintuitive argument about earmarks:

We have been paying attention to other things so it probably slipped out minds.  But as Bernie Becker of the The Hill reports, the defect hasn’t gone away (gone down, some, but not away) and:

The president gave a speech today.  No surprise there.  And in this speech, which was nominally devoted to infrastructure spending, he praised his administration’s economic record.  No surprise there, either, though it does take some cheek to boast about an economy in which fewer people than ever…

There was a time when stock car racing was an outlaw sport.  Some of the greatest of the early drivers learned their skills hauling moonshine. Most conspicuously, Junior Johnson who did a stretch in the federal crossbar hotel.  But the days of Junior, Richard, Dale, and the rest of them are long…

One of the many things that The Scrapbook doesn’t like about life in modern Washington—aside from the politics, of course—is the extent to which the nation’s capital, especially its downtown core, has become a high-pitch security zone. Access to public spaces and buildings is severely restricted;…

The white-hot issue of what to call the professional football team currently playing its home games in the vicinity of the nation’s capital just got hotter.  Earlier this week, Senator Harry Reid said he wouldn’t accept comp tickets (truly a first for a sitting senator) to the team’s games so long…

Speaking at a fundraiser (naturally), the president said what many have been saying. Namely that “Washington doesn’t work.” And, as Justin Sink of the Hill reports, he blamed the dysfunction on:

Has Cathy McMorris Rodgers given up on repealing Obamacare? A spokeswoman for the Washington state Republican House member and chair of the GOP conference says the congresswoman still supports repeal, despite a report from a Spokane newspaper that characterized her as saying that repeal of the law…

The Bryce Harper-Mike Trout showdown is underway and the outcome is, well, inconclusive. In round one Monday night, the Nationals leftfielder walked and went hitless in three at bats while the Anaheim Angels centerfielder went 2 for 5. On Tuesday, Harper took another collar going 0 for 4 as Trout…

The Washington Post catches the boss grabbing lunch. This time, he's with Indiana governor Mike Pence. As Reid Wilson reports:

The good times roll on in Washington.  But out in the country ...not so much. 

Despite my earnest intentions, my family and I are still not covered on the Washington, D.C. Obamacare exchange. I am beginning to despair that I will ever obtain insurance from the exchange.

News of a new and creative way for the recipients of federal grants to spend the money.  Use it to pay lobbyists.  Who will, presumably, work their magic in order to get more federal money, which can then be spent to lobby for yet even more federal money.  

With his unique appeal to the young, President Obama has suddenly transformed the “experiments” in Colorado and Washington state into an experiment involving every kid in America.

According to Gallup  among the 50 states, the president’s highest approval rating is in Hawaii where it is just above 60 percent.  Understandable, since he was born there, spends a lot of time and plays a lot of golf in the islands, and has enough history with Hawaii that he could call it home.

President Obama called for a minimum wage hike in his State of the Union Address, but to hear Washington state Democrats tell it, wages aren't the main concern: The real problem is the modern American workplace itself. The minimum wage in Washington state is already $9.32 an hour, more than two…

Happy days are here again on K Street.  As Kevin Bogardus and Erik Wasson of the Hill write, with Congress debating individual spending bills instead of simply passing continuing resolutions:

Former press secretary Robert Gibbs said today on TV that President Obama and his White House "long ago" gave up on "trying" to change Washington:

The effort to design, fund, and build a monument to Dwight Eisenhower has been underway for 15 years now.  So, unsurprisingly, while money has been spent and headquarters have been staffed, ground has not yet been broken. For that matter, the proposed design of the monument has, as Hannah Hess…

After a month of trying, I still can't complete an application to join the D.C. Health Exchange. For a week, the Obamacare marketplace asked me to prove my citizenship, my daughter's existence, and my fixed address in the District of Columbia, but it would not allow me to submit the requested…

Life is good in Washington, D.C., even as the lobbyists pout about how there hasn’t been enough action on Capitol Hill to keep those big retainers rolling in. As Michael Neibauer of Washington Business Journal reports:

David Hawkings, at Roll Call, writes almost wistfully of what might have been if Tom Daschle, President Obama’s first choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, had been confirmed by the Senate where he had been majority leader before his constituents in South Dakota voted him out of…

Welcome, Washington, to the real world.

These days, the only thing in Washington performing less ably and delivering more disappointment than Obamacare would be the Washington Re****ns, a facsimile of a football team that is long on controversy, short on competence, and overflowing in controversy.  The Re****ns hosted the Kansas…

At the corner of First and H Streets in Northwest Washington, the balloons were all set, hanging stories high in the cold morning air. The inflatable Pepsi and Mountain Dew bottles were twisting in the breeze, and a mini-hoop game was set up. There was even a marching band and Chester the Cheetos…

Everyone could use a nice government subsidy and bailouts aren’t just for broke car companies and derelict banks anymore.  Baseball teams need that same kind of taxpayer love.  No surprise then, as Mark Segraves of NBC’s channel 4 in Washington reports:

CNN reports that a woman the president hailed as an Obamacare success story just realized she won't be able to afford Obamacare because it's too expensive:

Washington, D.C. is booming. That's in large part because of a massive growth in lobbying expenditures and federal contracts.

The Foreign Policy Initiative's annual forum is tomorrow in Washington, D.C. "The full lineup and link to RSVP is here and below. Forum is free, on-the-record and open to the public.  To follow the Forum, folks should use #FPIForum. We are also taking questions via Twitter," says FPI in an…

Later today, President Obama will do one of those events where he appears with several people whose life experiences provide an example for the rest of us. In this case, they will be people who have successfully signed up for Obamacare on its website, despite what are described by the New York…

On Tuesday evening, the reelection campaign for Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor emailed supporters about a recent "secret meeting" between Republican senator Ted Cruz and a group of House Republicans at a restaurant on Capitol Hill, Tortilla Coast. Pryor campaign manager Jeff Weaver suggested that the…

Like the Eiffel Tower, the Capital Beltway is an industrial monstrosity that, inadvertently, has come to represent its hometown to the outside world.

In an attempt to dramatize the effects of the federal government shutdown, Washington state Democrats may have revealed more about their state and about the state of the economy under President Obama than they intended.  The Advance, official blog of the Washington state house Democrats, posted the…

Our upcoming WEEKLY STANDARD cruise had me thinking (only a bit!) about blackjack, since the ship's casino is occasionally (rarely!) frequented after dinner by TWS editors and guests. I remember being told on a previous cruise by a real gambler that the characteristic error of occasional blackjack…

Detroit failed after years of one-party rule (guess which one), mismanagement, and corruption. Businesses closed down. Buildings were left derelict until they were torched for the fun of it.  Feral animals roamed the streets as the people fled.  After the usual protestations that it would never…

The urge to drape mundane or slightly disreputable work with a fancy title has been with us for a while. Thus garbage collectors are "sanitation engineers."  Prison guards, "correction officers."  Strippers, "exotic dancers." This provided some good material for the late George Carlin and became…

The question at the core of most of today’s debates in American politics is whether all people have an unalienable right to keep the fruits of their own labor—as the Founders believed and the Declaration of Independence (properly understood) asserts—or whether the government should funnel vast sums…

An unnamed White House official released this statement on the shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.:

Are you feeling impulsive? Well, if you are in the District of Columbia there is nothing to fear—the government is doing all it can to protect you from yourself. D.C.’s health department has issued draft regulations that would require anyone seeking a tattoo to wait 24 hours to be inked. A…

An office building manager in downtown Washington, D.C. is preparing for the 9/11 "Million Muslim March" by explaining to the tenants of the building what's expected for tomorrow.

Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas has introduced a bill which, if it were put to a national referendum, could not lose.  The title alone makes it a sure winner:

Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, is making the case that some "cyber" jobs need to be moved away from the Washington, D.C. area -- and to Louisiana, where those people might be physically safer.

All is quiet on the Washington front. But don’t let the lull in partisan warfare fool you. In two weeks Congress returns from its summer recess, after hearing from constituents who hold the institution in lower esteem than used car salesmen, and view eating Brussels sprouts, enduring traffic jams,…

On August 15, 2012, at 10:46 a.m.—one year ago this week—Floyd Lee Corkins entered the lobby of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. He was carrying a backpack that contained 15 Chick-fil-A -sandwiches, a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol, and 100 rounds of ammunition. Corkins has since pleaded…

The Washington, D.C. EMS ambulance that accompanies the presidential motorcade,  Medic 1, ran out of gas last week, just as President Obama was pulling away from the White House August 8 on his way to a family birthday celebration at a local Indian restaurant:

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon:

Women Speak for Themselves, a grassroots organization of more than 40,000 women for religious freedom, gathered today at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. to protest enforcement of the Health and Human Services mandate, which requires employers (including some religious institutions) to cover…

Say you are a company that builds and operates large retail stores, selling consumer goods at desirable prices and that you have been successful across the land.  Let's call you ... oh, Walmart.

Andrew Ferguson reviews Mark Leibovich's This Town in the Wall Street Journal:

The Imperial City has ruled that it doesn't need Walmart, the nation's most popular retailer, since Washington has attained a condition of sleek prosperity whereby, according to one member of its ruling council:

The beleaguered Eisenhower Memorial Commission holds its next public gathering later this month, and before its members duck-walk into the hearing room, huddled in a hoplite phalanx against a shower of eggs and rotten vegetables unloosed by an audience of neo-classicist fuddy-duddies, they should…

At a Democratic fundraiser in Palo Alto, California, President Barack Obama described himself as a common sense Democrat.

Standard operating procedure in Washington, when confronted with a political crisis – or even several of them – is to change the subject, then leave town and raise some money.  Lots of it.

Today, the political class celebrates the long career of John Dingell.  As of Friday nobody, not even Robert Byrd, will have served longer in either body of Congress.  As the media fashions this story, we are expected not only to marvel but to feel gratitude. Whatta guy. Great public servant. Been…

Democratic congressman Jose Serrano made the case that the IRS needs more to prevent the federal agency from more scandals:

It becomes more and more difficult to find the bad news about the sequester.  Unless, that is, you are in the Pentagon and trying to figure out how to keep the Marine Corps fully equipped and trained and up to strength.

The show will go on.  Sequestration may have cost Washington D.C. tourists a chance to tour the White House, but the Independence Day fireworks will go off as planned.  A contract was awarded yesterday to Garden State Fireworks of Millington, NJ for $221,819.77.  The listing for bids on the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on scandal week in Washington.

Today's big number is non-farm payrolls. And, thus, the unemployment rate for the previous month. The economists surveyed by Reuters called for 145,000 jobs and an unemployment rate at 7.6 percent.

Last night in Washington, Joe Biden stated that abused women fear getting "raped again by the system." He also made the push that Washington, D.C. should be its own state, with two U.S. senators.

Tonight is the occasion of the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, which Ron Fournier deplores:

In remarks in the Rose Garden, President Obama scolded the Senate for blocking gun control measures:

For all the talk of "changing the culture in Washington," it appears to be business as usual ... only more so.  Things are done – when, and if, they are – by people who play a tough inside game with no spectators. Washington will soon be working on revisions to the tax laws – since, obviously, they…

A restaurant where President Obama took winners of his 2012 campaign’s “Dinner with Barack” contest was forced to close this week because it was cited for failing to comply with Washington, D.C.’s health and sanitation regulations.

Eighty percent of Americans are unhappy with Washington, a new CBS poll finds. Many are angry.

Washington, D.C. police claim a sinkhole has been spotted in the city, a Politico reporter says on Twitter:

Terry McAuliffe, who is running for governor in Virginia, recently traveled down to Florida for a political fundraiser. And in an interview yesterday, the host of that Florida fundraiser, John Morgan, mocked Virginia as "a state that some of us have never heard of, it’s off the coast of D.C."

It isn't quite blood in the streets ... yet.  But it is starting and who knows where it might end.  Washington might even have to endure falling real estate prices and widespread unemployment and, well, what every other part of the country has been going through.

Poor kids to go without lunches and vaccinations, meat sold without being inspected, firemen and cops laid off, illegal aliens released from prison, 17,200 teachers fired, airports closed, long lines at airports, and 700,000 workers laid off. Egypt in ferment? Syria at war? Austerity-ridden Greece?…

Retired senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat who left office in 2011, has his home newly renovated profiled and praised by Home & Design. The North Dakota senator's "stately" home was purchased 20 years ago, according to the magazine. 

Did I miss something? Or was the State of the Union Address delivered by President Obama last night unusually pedestrian, packed to the gills with clichés, promises, gimmicks, and endless talk of partnerships, goals, challenges, and commissions for which Washington is famous?

On the strength of half-a-century’s work with newspaper people, I can confidently say that no cadre of that tribe is subject to greater superstition than Washington reporters. It seems a settled prejudice that all reporters, everywhere, are puffed-up Pulitzer-seekers and partisans in disguise,…

In his weekly address, President Barack Obama blamed the economic problems on "bad decisions."

The various deals in Washington on extending the "Bush tax cuts," returning the payroll (FICA) tax to previous rates, increasing taxes paid by "millionaires and billionaires, delaying action on the debt ceiling, and so forth have, evidently, not worked to reassure the rest of America that we are on…

Senator Chuck Schumer is not down with the idea of people selling their tickets to the presidential inauguration next week. And he has "asked" Craigslist and eBay to cease and desist offering them.  It is a matter of civic hygiene, don't you know.  As the senator helpfully explained, "Having a…

As talk of gun control legislation continues, Vice President Joe Biden, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, will meet tomorrow with gun "victims' groups."

I'm as thrilled as every other red-blooded Washington-area resident by the Redskins' victory yesterday. Yes, I did "predict" a Cowboys victory on Fox News Sunday. But that was, as I said on the show, a prediction contrary to my hopes, and of course was really made in order to avert the evil eye…

Two days after reports that hotels in Washington are not filling up ahead of Barack Obama's second inauguration, the president emailed supporters to encourage them to come to the festivities scheduled for next month in Washington, D.C. 

A petition on the White House's website calls for charges to be filed against David Gregory for breaking Washington, D.C.'s gun laws. "Press charges against David Gregory for possession of a 30-round, high capacity assault rifle magazine in Washington D.C," reads the title of the petition:

President Barack Obama announced today that he's "asked the Vice President to lead an effort that includes members of my Cabinet and outside organizations to come up with a set of concrete proposals no later than January -- proposals that I then intend to push without delay."

A "Green Inaugural Ball" has been scheduled to celebrate President Barack Obama's second inauguration, according to an invitation of the event. The ball will be held January 20, the day of Obama's second inauguration, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C.

The guy was a political science major, he knows about politics, he’s clever, he’s smart, he’s funny. It’s what people talk about at dinner parties, it’s what people talk about in the office, and it has united Washington in a way that I have never seen before. This according to Sally Quinn who knows…

Here's a picture a Washington, D.C. polling place--at the School Without Walls High School--which clearly displays a mural of President Barack Obama:

Democrats Maureen Walsh and Andy Rosenberg stood on the side of a street in a Northern Virginia subdivision where the hum of Interstate 66 lingered in the background. They studied a rudimentary map of the neighborhood and flipped through pages on a clipboard to brush up on their script.  It was…

The Washington Post reports: 

President Obama said in an interview yesterday that, “The most important lesson I’ve learned is you can’t change Washington from the inside.”

Senate majority leader Harry Reid is holding up the Senate to allow a vote on a bill introduced by embattled Democrat Jon Tester.

The controversial proposal for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial now has a new component: a smartphone app, which, according to the memorial’s designers, visitors will be able to use on-site to “contextualize Eisenhower’s impact” and view historical and biographical content. Postmodern…

In the fall of 2011, the Obama administration revealed that American officials had discovered an Iranian terrorist plot against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. Working through a local emissary, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers planned to hire members of a Mexican drug cartel…

In Beirut last week, former Lebanese MP and cabinet member Michel Samaha was arrested and later confessed to “planning terrorist attacks in Lebanon at Syrian orders.” A longtime ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Samaha was apparently acting under the direction of Damascus to stir sectarian…

I’m reassured—indeed, encouraged—indeed, buoyed!—by this morning's Politico article, "GOP pros fret over Paul Ryan." "GOP pros" are the stupidest part of "the stupid party." For one thing, they're not very professional—why are they using the press to take shots at the Ryan pick in the first…

The Washington Surgi-Clinic, located just five blocks west of the White House, advertises on its website that it performs abortions 26 weeks (6 months) into pregnancy. The website of another clinic advertises second- and third-trimester abortions involving the “intercardiac injection of medication…

The lobbying firm Strategic Health Care is hosting a Capitol Hill event titled, "White Trash Reception." Here's a flyer for the event:

The biggest newspaper in the Washington, D.C. area asks, "Did global warming intensify the derecho in Washington, D.C.?" It's the same question the Washington Post brought up directly after the derecho thunderstorm struck the Washington area last Friday.

Newt Gingrich issued a warning, based on the destructive storms that hit the Washington, D.C. area over the weekend, on Twitter: 

Writing at the Daily Beast, Eli Lake has the scoop on a ridiculous attempt at diplomacy with the new Egyptian parliament. One member of an Egyptian delegation visiting Washington this week was a man named Hani Nour Eldin. He is also a member of Gamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group, or “IG”), a designated…

The Washington Post reports that D.C. councilman (and four-time mayor) Marion Barry has “launched a last ditch effort to slow or derail the city’s planned streetcar line on H Street, arguing it’s not been well-thought out and is too expensive for the number of riders it will serve.”

The tide sweeping from Greece across Europe and into the United States is washing away support for austerity, in some cases reinforcing opposition to it, largely from the left. President Obama is delighted at this support for his refusal to cut spending in the face of mounting deficits, and the…

On June 19, 1981 a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66. “I've always been a firm believer in the principle that it’s better to go too soon than to stay too long. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I wanted to have an opportunity to spend…

On Friday, the boss took on Democratic congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts at a debate sponsored by the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C. Watch here: 

It appears increasingly likely that Senator Richard Lugar will not be the senior U.S. senator from Indiana when the next Congress is sworn in. After 36 years on the job, he is running behind in a tough primary. His opponent's main knock on Lugar is that he has been in Washington too long and been…

No budget, just now, says Senator Conrad. The timing isn't right.

In just the last few months, Bidzina Ivanishvili, one of the world's richest men with an estimated $6.5 billion fortune, hired a small army of PR consultants and lobbyists in Washington, including at least 7 of Washington’s most prominent firms. And though Ivanishvili built his business empire in…

As polls close in Maryland and Washington, D.C., "NBC News projects Romney the winner of both," tweets NBC's Chuck Todd. "Should be a delegate sweep in MD but too early to call that part just yet," says Todd, suggesting that Romney will go over 50 percent of the vote in Maryland.

CNN reports:

PPP reports on its latest poll of likely Washington caucus voters: 

In an interview tonight with News Channel 8’s Keith Cate from Tampa, President Obama praised his administration's ability to "[use] the Internet more effectively" so that folks, "If they need a government service, they don’t have to navigate through 50 websites, they can go to one website so on…

While some of the Republican presidential candidates consistently suggest that the economy is the only first-tier issue in the upcoming election, the party is missing a tremendous opportunity to run against the Obama administration’s unprecedented amassing of power and money at the expense of…

We may be witnessing a perfect Washington moment. For most of the workweek, attention has been focused on the collapse of a solar energy company that had received economically dubious–and politically motivated–subsidies of some $500 million. On Sunday, the city’s football franchise, the Redskins,…

In the Washington Post, Camden Fine, president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America, writes, “I was astounded this month when the Federal Reserve announced its intention to keep interest rates at zero percent for at least the next two years. I kept staring at that…

By noon today, the Dow Jones Industrial Index had tanked by yet another 400 points. So what's a hands-on, crisis-oriented president to do? Should he let the veritable army of in-house chefs crank out another executive lunch from the White House kitchen and stay close to the unfolding mayhem of the…

Looking at Washington these days, one suspects that this is the way things will be for a long time to come. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day (and all that), the massive tangle of dependencies, entitlements, political payoffs, and perpetual pork barrel schemes that is our national government…

I was struck by these sentences in President Obama’s speech:

In this week’s newsletter, Matt Continetti writes:

They are buying limousines in Washington. Lots of them. The number of government limousines increased by 73 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration. The official justification for the acquisition (with borrowed Chinese money) of all this rolling stock is “security.” Our…

A delegation of the People's Liberation Army, the largest group of Chinese military officers ever to visit the United States, recently toured the Pentagon and other U.S. defense facilities. Part of their mission was to further erode and finally end the congressional ban on weapons and technology…

Ohio's congressional delegation is shrinking; Washington state's is growing. So with the prospect of losing his congressional seat to redistricting, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich is exploring a House run in Washington, far away from Cleveland, the city he was once the mayor of. “My district…

What do participants in J Street's national conference believe in? Here's a glimpse:

We recently uncovered a memo, circulated to Washington journalists after the 1994 election, which is again pertinent after November's midterm election. It was published in the Wall Street Journal under Andrew Ferguson's byline and, as the original piece disclaimed, "Any relation to any actual memo…

Pacific County, Washington 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by; The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. --from Sam Walter Foss's 'House by the Side of the Road,' the first poem Marion Barry recited in church as a boy In most conceptions of Washington,…