The Londoner

The infanticidal maniac of Sandy Hook was merely conscripting grade-school extras for a hollow, hyper-narcissistic act of public suicide .   A man kneels in front of a makeshift memorial during a moment of silence at 9:30 a.m., Friday, Dec. 21, in Newtown, Conn . The chiming of bells reverberated throughout Newtown, commemorating one week since the crackle of gunfire in a schoolhouse killed 20 children and six adults in a massacre that has shaken the community and the nation. The 16th-century Coventry Carol, a mother's lament for her lost son, is the only song of the season about the other children of Christmas – the first-born of Bethlehem, slaughtered on Herod's orders after the Magi brought him the not-so-glad tidings that an infant of that city would grow up to be King of the Jews. As Matthew tells it, even in a story of miraculous birth, in t

Plan B Fails, Boehner Marches Toward Cliff People are using words like “meltdown” to describe the failure of the House of Representatives last night to pass “Plan B.” They’re doing that because House votes are traditionally a matter of pure formality, normally having all the suspense of a Politburo vote. John Boehner expected to squeeze 217 votes from his 241 Republican members because, once Boehner had decided on his course, they had no rational choice. It was vote with him or court pure chaos. Some number of his charges – at least a couple dozen – chose chaos. At the same time, the actual stakes of the vote were far from Earth-shaking. Let us consider the progression here. Boehner had been negotiating quite fruitfully with President Obama , and had brought the terms of the emerging agreement closer to where he started than Obama had started, with a deal-hungry Obama apparently ready to move even a bit farther. Then, almo

Tim Scott meets with GOP base approval as Jim DeMint's successor The South Carolina Republican congressman's appointment to the Senate is less a win for diversity than for Tea Party orthodoxy Congressman Tim Scott, soon to be US Senator for South Carolina. Photograph: timscott.house.gov When South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley appoints Representative Tim Scott to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy made by the departing Jim DeMint, it will have been 32 years since another black Republican took a seat there. This seems like more of a cause for shame than celebration – and not just for the Republican party, but for Democrats, as well: only five other black men, and one black woman, have ever held office in the nation's upper chamber. At least the Democrats mostly elected theirs – Scott won't just be the third black Republican in the Senate from the American south, he will also be the third to get there withou

The Benghazi Report: How smoothly Washington washes away its scandals You'll be able to hear and read today about the State Department report on the Benghazi consulate sacking and killings. But no matter how much you listen or read, you'll only be getting part of the story. Here's why: The report from the Accountability Review Board, headed by Thomas Picketing and Admiral Mike Mullen, is only one tiny piece of a vast bureaucratic ballet that has evolved in Washington over decades to handle hot issues, even deadly ones like Benghazi, with minimal damage to the politicians and bureaucrats in power at the time. It's an amazingly sophisticated and bipartisan procedure that looks sound to naive eyes. It's built upon powerful self-interest and savvy strategic communications that manages and manipulates information and the timing of its release to minimize damage to incumbents and to dampen ongoing media interest in pursuing an emba

Why the next four years might be more of the same Rather than come to some agreement with the administration, House Republicans have switched to a unilateral plan to deal with the fiscal cliff: Bush-era tax rates would remain for all income under $1 million. The White House has now announced that Obama would veto any such measure, and the House GOP’s “plan B” isn’t going anywhere. But it signifies something larger about what to expect in Obama’s second term: That none of the incentives have changed for Republicans, meaning they still have no reason to cooperate with the President. In other words: The next four years may be largely the same as the last four. The GOP’s current behavior is out of sync with the public’s priorities, as expressed in the election, where solid majorities reelected President Obama and sent more Democrats to the Senate. But that likely won’t matter to Republicans, because the odds are good that in the end they won’t incur public discontent for

Invincible Ignorance By Thomas Sowell Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of "gun control" advocates? The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available. If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive. Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates. Washington, D.C., is a classic example, but just one among many. When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, bu

His Birmingham Moment? It took a traumatic turn of events in Alabama to show John F. Kennedy that he had to confront the issue of civil rights. The Newtown massacre may be a precipitating event for Barack Obama. B arack Obama’s pitch-perfect public statements on the Sandy Hook shootings summed up the grief and shock that even the most distant observer—and certainly every parent—must feel about last Friday’s unspeakable events. But I think I detected an even more personal elegiac note: regret that he himself has not done more to grapple with the issue of guns. “Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?” the president asked in Newtown, Connecticut, on Sunday. “I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to ch

A Fiscal Deal Is Emerging—But Is It Any Good? An agreement on the "fiscal cliff" may be near. On Friday, House Speaker John Boehner endorsed the idea of higher tax rates on upper incomes--a real concession that allowed serious negotiations to go forward. Over the weekend, he and President Obama spoke by telephone. On Monday, they met at the White House. They could reach an agreement within the next few days—not a detailed blueprint for legislation, mind you, but an agreement on the basic principles. Of course, all the usual caveat apply. Talks could break down all over again, congressional delegations could throw a fit, and so on. The terms are still murky and, presumably, under discussion. The details will make a huge difference. But the broad outlines, first reported by  Ezra Klein  in the  Washington Post  on Monday afternoon, are coming into view. [Update: For details on the latest White House counter-offer, leaked to reporters on Mon

Sen. John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State After the GOP embarrassed Susan Rice out of the running, ABC News reported  on Saturday that Obama will nominate Sen. John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee , brings with him a long record on foreign policy—and a little dirty laundry. Below is a collection of his statements and stances on recent foreign policy crises. Syria Before Syria’s Bashar al-Assad began killing thousands of civilians, Sen. Kerry counted himself among the foreign policy minds hoping that Assad would prove a reformer . To that end, he and Assad had multiple discussions that left Kerry feeling optimistic . In April 2010, he called Syria “an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region.” In March 2011, he said , “President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had. … So my judgment is that S

Untouchable Why Hillary Clinton is the Teflon secretary. Washington can be a cruel and unforgiving place. Want a friend? Harry Truman once said. Get a dog. Or maybe he didn't say it . But it's a good point: In this town, nobody gets a free pass from the press, the pundits, and the pols. Nobody, that is, until Hillary Clinton. At the end of her tenure as secretary of state, she alone has emerged virtually unscathed -- the lone superstar of the president's first term. A recent poll has her numbers well above the president's and exceeded only by -- you guessed it -- her husband Bill. And those high favorability ratings have remained pretty consistent since 2008. There's no denying that Clinton has done a very good job as the nation's top diplomat. But to read the media adulation, you'd think she was about to be admitted into the secretary of state

Birth Control In United States Lost amid the shock and horror of Friday's news was a remarkable op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who should no longer be called a "rising star" of the GOP. He commands attention by virtue of being smart, good at his job, and not a white guy. So it's significant that he chose to use his platform to break ranks with many social conservatives in his party by calling for over-the-counter sales of birth control pills. Of course, Jindal did so by couching his argument in a hyper-partisan defensive posture, lashing out at "Democrats [who] demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control." Jindal recognizes that the vast majority of Americans support the use of contraception, and that the issue of access to contraception is a loser for Republicans. So he proposes to take the

  S ilence Is Not An Option What will it take? What will it take for a majority of Americans to speak out for a sensible firearms policy in our nation? It will take more than a congresswoman being shot point-blank in the face as she gathers for a town meeting in Arizona. It will take more than a deranged gunman with a hundred-round magazine spraying bullets into a crowded movie theater in Colorado. It will take more t

Some Unlikely Democrats Join in Push for New Gun Laws Congressional Democrats showed signs on Monday of a more aggressive push on gun control in the wake of the Newtown killings, while Republicans and gun rights advocates remained largely silent on policy matters. Joe Manchin III, the pro-gun-rights West Virginia senator who drew attention in 2010 after running a commercial that showed him firing a rifle at an environmental bill, said that “everything should be on the table” as gun control is debated in the coming weeks and months. Representative John Yarmuth, a moderate Democrat from Kentucky, said he finally felt compelled to speak out on an issue that has been untouchable for many elected officials. “I have been largely silent on the issue of gun violence over the past six years, and I am now as sorry for that as I am for what happened to the families who lost so much in this most recent, but sadly not isolated, tragedy,” Mr. Yarmuth said in a statement. “Th

For once, I am inclined to believe Hillary Clinton. The U.S. Secretary of State, suffering from a sick stomach, has reportedly fainted and bumped her head. As a result, her spokespeople have already announced that she will be unable to testify at the Benghazi hearings, although she was not due to appear until December 20, many days after the vaguely reported fainting spell. Already, the internet is resounding with a chorus of "How convenient!" (See here and here , for example.) Many, upon hearing this news, are assuming that Clinton, who has been hedging for a month on whether to appear at the congressional hearings, has concocted yet another excuse to avoid facing the music on a scandal which, if pursued with integrity, would likely end her political career, to put it mildly. I, on the contrary, would like to give Secretary Clinton the benefit of the doubt on this one. Though I have never participated in a cover-up involving t