Clad in a black jacket over an open-necked black shirt, speaking directly into the camera against the backdrop of a summer coastline, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev looked every inch the Moscow mafioso out on a hot date. This was not an inappropriate “look” given that his script — a video open letter to the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko — was a series of velvet menaces. Officially he was justifying Russia’s decision not to send its ambassador to Kiev; between the lines he urged Ukrainians to vote against Yushchenko in next year’s January election; under the smoothness he seemed to be …
Bear Right
The specter of a Greater Russia?
In This Issue
Articles
Direction, Anyone?
Republicans are looking for a leader. Go to any right-leaning gathering, and at some point the conversation will turn to the party’s potential presidential nominee in 2012. Republicans were less ...
Blue Dog Blues
Honesdale, Pa. –
If you want to understand better why President Obama’s heath-care agenda has foundered, consider the story of Rep. Christopher Carney, a Democrat who represents the district that includes ...
Stuck Three in the Middle
If Congress does not pass a health-care bill with a public option, the credit (from others, the blame) will fall on the shoulders of one of America’s most powerful backroom ...
A Matter of Scale
A common liberal talking point is that, based on the historical record, reducing greenhouse gases should be fairly easy. After all, acid rain was once a terrible problem, but government ...
Hillary’s Innocence Abroad
Hillary Clinton’s eleven-day trip through Africa was an odd affair. The proximate reason for it was that Obama’s election awakened wholly unrealistic expectations throughout Africa that the new president would ...
Bear Right
Clad in a black jacket over an open-necked black shirt, speaking directly into the camera against the backdrop of a summer coastline, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev looked every inch the ...
Town Hall Summer
The Chinese go nuts once every 50 years or so. The last time was around 1966, when the country erupted into something called the Cultural Revolution, and leading political and ...
Features
Rubio Rising
Florida governor Charlie Crist is running for the Senate, and he isn’t supposed to lose — let alone lose in the Republican primary. He enjoys a high approval rating, has ...
Why the Stimulus Failed
Conservatives have correctly declared President Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” a flop. In a January report, White House economists predicted the bill would create (not merely save) 3.3 million jobs. Since ...
Revenge of the Castle People
Relations between the aristocrat and the common man have never been easy. The antipathy between castle people, who dwell in the manor house, and agora people, children of the marketplace, ...
Books, Arts & Manners
Bernanke’s War
David Wessel’s new volume on the Federal Reserve’s response to the financial crisis is the sort of book that Bob Woodward usually writes about U.S. presidents: a character-driven, sometimes novelistic, ...
Madison and Public Reason
Many myths surround and obfuscate the American Founding. One is that the Founders and the Constitution they created had a peculiarly modern and atomistic view of society. According to this ...
This Is How It Flops
Grant Ginder’s lightly satirical novel about the young, wealthy political set in Washington, D.C., is a shallow, clichéd, and not particularly likable book about shallow, clichéd, and not particularly likable ...
Music: In Halls Great and Small
Salzburg, Austria –
Four months ago, I reported in these pages from the Salzburg Easter Festival. Basically a weeklong affair, that is a mere bagatelle — a warmup for the main ...
Film: Inner Space
The next time you read about the money that’s been poured away bringing some lame, unnecessary science-fiction spectacular to life — the $200 million that Michael Bay spent making the ...
Creative Destruction
My local GM dealer has shut up shop. I drive past the place every day; it is a melancholy sight. Weeds and tall grasses are coming up all around. The ...
Sections
Letters
Defining ‘Conservative’
For the most part I agree with Tod Lindberg’s review of The Conservatives, by Patrick Allitt (“The Deepest Roots,” August 10), and I certainly look forward to reading the ...
The Week
‐ New left-wing slogan: Dissent is the highest form of tastelessness.
‐ Congressmen’s town-hall meetings on the president’s health-care plan have caused a backlash of un-American fury. It comes from liberals, ...
Transcript: Larry King Live, Sept. 7, 2012
LARRY KING: From Paterson, New Jersey! Hello!
CALLER: Hi, Larry. I’d like to ask your guest if he ever gets mad when people call it a “death panel.”
LARRY KING: Great question. ...
The Pure Gift
On the hottest day that summer, a rainbow
Arced over the clock-tower of the brick pile
We call The Rotunda, a dying shopping mall
With a wilting grocery, a druggist, a flower stall,
A ...
Sharia in New Haven
Whenever I write about Europe and demography, I get a lot of mail on the general line of “Oh yeah, Steyn? When will Muslims be 50.01 percent of the population ...