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Frank Rich, writing in New York magazine, has taken issue with my pieces on Goldwater, Republicans, and civil rights, calling it part of “the most insidious and determined campaign to rewrite racial history on the right.” If you can dig through Mr. Rich’s characteristically limp and emotive prose, you will discover that his argument amounts to: “Nyah, nyah! Strom Thurmond!”

42-year-old Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. By dint of his mother’s citizenship, Cruz was an American citizen at birth. Whether he meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president of the United States be a “natural-born citizen,” a term the Framers didn’t define and for which the nation’s courts have yet to offer an interpretation, has become the subject of considerable speculation. Snip~ Legal scholars are firm about Cruz’s eligibility. “Of course he’s eligible,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. “He’s a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen.” Eugene Volokh,...

"The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice." -- George Washington (1779) A Bronze Star Power Point? Actually, not ... Drive-by Journalism at Its Worst In keeping with our publishing deadlines, every Tuesday morning I send notice of my topic for Thursday's column to our editorial team. This week, I sent notice that I was writing about "military award inflation," and particularly a story from reputable news sources about an Air Force chaplain, Lt. Col. Jon Trainer, who received a Bronze Star for a PowerPoint. I first read this story under an inflammatory National...

Mario, I really think we are going to have to sit down around a decent bottle of Argentinean Malbec and thrash these matters out amicably. So, in the meantime, I don’t want to throw a match onto the tinder you’ve been gathering around the stake for your auto-da-fe. You should at least modify your condemnation of immigration hawks, since you are the one going up in flames. Very briefly, here’s why: You are alleging that immigration hawks are not conservatives and don’t deserve conservative allies because some of them are (coercive) population controllers. In order to make this stick logically,...

The Buckley Rule has been much invoked in recent weeks, in this space and elsewhere, and on almost every occasion it has been both misquoted and misapplied. As one who was present at the formulation, I feel obliged to record the “originalist” intention. It was the winter of 1964 and the unresolved question at NR editorial meetings, week to week, was this: Whom should the magazine support for the Republican presidential nomination? To outsiders, the question would have seemed all but settled. Issue by issue, NR gave every appearance of being all in for Barry Goldwater. Heck, there were those...

Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has been a United States senator for only 34 days, but already he is making his mark on national politics. His conspicuous presence and aggressive tone have thrilled his conservative cheerleaders, while inducing fits of rage in liberal detractors and Joe Scarborough. In the past week alone, Cruz has tangled with veteran Democratic spin-master Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Meet the Press, sent a tongue-in-cheek letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, introduced legislation to fully repeal Obamacare, and recorded “no” votes on major items, including Hurricane Sandy relief, raising the debt ceiling, filibuster reform, and...

Conservative writers and academics gather for the National Review Institute Summit, beginning on Friday in Washington, D.C. The summit focuses on addressing the challenges facing conservatism and finding solutions that will strengthen the movement. First, political newcomer Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AK) sits down for an interview with Jay Nordlinger of National Review. Next, a panel of experts examine the topic "Can politics be hospitable to life?" Panelists include: Chuck Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Jeanne Monahan of March for Life and Carter Snead of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. National Review Editor Rich Lowry interviews American...

Who would you trust more to reflect how William F. Buckley, Jr. would have felt on an important issue of the day: the editors of the National Review--the magazine that WFB founded--or the combined wisdom of Arianna Huffington and Joe Scarborough? In an editorial published before Hagel's nomination became official, the Editors at National Review wrote: "Chuck Hagel is a very poor choice for the next secretary of defense," concluding that he was "definitively not the man who should be the next secretary of defense." But on today's Morning Joe, when Huffington asked "don't you think William F. Buckley would...

Just one of the many misconceptions about conservatives, particularly in the academy, is that we all come off of an assembly line. To preserve this fiction, academics prefer to study us from a distance, if at all. Thus we get studies with bizarre conclusions about how much we love authority figures. They read us backwards: Conformity is the antithesis of our ethos. I’ve been to left-wing and right-wing events and found infinitely more diversity at the latter than at the former. “For all the cant about ‘openness to ideas’ (that word again!), they cooperate to impose an ersatz consensus on...

Dear fellow conservative: Could there be a worse incumbent Democrat senator facing re-election than New York's Kirsten Gillibrand? And could we have a better challenger-a more reliable, articulate, intelligent woman; a more authentic, talented, and real conservative-than my old pal, Wendy Long? snip The act of political donating used to be so . . . provincial. But we're all smarter now: We've learned, too often the hard way, that every senator, not just those from our own state, but every single senator has a huge impact on our lives. That one vote always seems to matter, snip Without question, Wendy...

One of Romney’s great skills is the ability to turn around failing enterprises. He did it with private firms while he ran Bain Capital, he did it for an indebted Massachusetts, and he did it for the Olympics. He needs to do it for his campaign now. Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster, attempted to soothe worried Republicans last week by stressing that the race remains extremely close. But the fact that Romney’s pollster isn’t worried is itself worrying. By rights, Romney should be ten points ahead. His campaign seems to think the bad economy will automatically win this race for the...

Climate Fraud: In an attempt to defend his role in the greatest scam of modern times, Climate-gate's poster child threatens to defend his tarnished reputation in court. First, hide the decline, then hide the deceit. 'Get lost" was National Review editor Rich Lowry's appropriate response to a threatened lawsuit by Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. NR printed a post by the great Mark Steyn, who graces these pages as well, calling Mann's famous hockey-stick graph "fraudulent." That it is indeed a fraud has been documented by many, including us. Mann was at the heart of the Climate-gate scandal in...

John R. Lott Jr. and Grover G. Norquist are the authors of Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. Lott, a former colleague of the president’s at the University of Chicago Law School, answers some questions about the depth of the debacle and the way out from National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: John, you say that when you were a faculty colleague of Barack Obama, he tagged you as “the gun guy” and announced that “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” That...

Former Republican Rep. Tom Davis told The Hill newspaper: “The middle is getting squeezed,” but his comment vastly understates the crisis in the capital. Activists in both parties have declared war on moderates. The ideological gap between the two parties is widening rapidly. Paralysis is pervasive. Political scientist Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, who studies voting patterns, told the National Journal: “We are clearly as conflicted as we’ve been since 1905. The parties are, I think, completely dysfunctional and incapable of acting on major policy.” The National Journal reports that as recently as 1999, more than half of...

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, or any one of his “Straggler� columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our...

WALTHAM, MA (July 12, 2007) -- Twenty-two conservative activist leaders have publicly released a letter challenging the conservative magazine National Review's "puff work" for presidential candidate Mitt Romney and implying that the magazine is quietly abandoning the social conservative grassroots and constitutionalism. The letter was sent to National Review on June 1, 1007. The editors refuse even to acknowledge receipt of the letter, which cites information about which they've misled their readers, most strikingly: •Romney's stance and record after his "awakening" are not pro-life. •The Massachusetts Constitution says the people are bound only by laws ratified by the legislature; and...

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month by a neighborhood-watch volunteer was a sickening and — unless new facts come to light — unjustified loss of an innocent life. Unless Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, had reason to believe that Martin was armed, shooting him was a grossly disproportionate response to a fistfight, even leaving aside the fact that Zimmerman had initiated the encounter. If such a shooting is justified under Florida’s broad self-defense law, that law has licensed violence that goes far beyond legitimate self-defense. Every American shares the despair of Martin’s family over this heartbreaking tragedy...

The most frequently cited (and probably the most controversial) research on the “Chicks Dig Jerks” thesis is the “Dark Triad” work of Professor Peter Jonason of the University of South Alabama. The Dark Triad is a combination of psychological traits — subclinical psychopathology, subclinical narcissism, and what Professor Jonason calls “Machiavellianism” — that are, he believes, in fact a unitary phenomenon associated with a higher level of sexual success, defined in the literature as a larger number of total lifetime sexual partners. The correlation of the Dark Triad with larger numbers of sexual partners holds true for both men and...

The National Review wants former House speaker Newt Gingrich to call it quits. The GOP presidential candidate has long had an uneasy relationship with the mainstream conservative press in general and National Review in particular, and he will likely dismiss the editorial as “establishment” meddling. The paper’s harsh assessment is likely the tip of the iceberg, however, and Gingrich will be forced to defend his own relevance going forward in the campaign — never a good place for a candidate to be. “[Former Pennsylvania senator Rick] Santorum has won more contests than Gingrich (who has won only one), has more...

Jonah, I agree with you on the general tin-ear of Romney. He’s extremely un-nimble on the stump, which means that Republicans will be gambling that he can be sufficiently insulated and managed across the finish line without offering up any campaign-detonating hostage to fortune.

So with New Hampshire behind us (and with any luck, never again in front of us), and with my tendency to be overloaded with life to the point at which I catch up on things I meant to write two to fifty-two weeks after they are timely, I wanted to say something about the controversy which was and is best described as “National Romney Online.” For those of you who don’t keep up on conservative tendencies to engage in circular firing squads, a summary is in order; for those of you who couldn’t give a rat’s anus, best just to...

In last night’s debate among Republican presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich defended his proposal to oust bad judges from office by statutorily abolishing the judicial offices they occupy. In a series of posts, Matt Franck and I will explain why we believe that this particular proposal of Gingrich’s is constitutionally unsound and politically foolish. (Matt and I may have somewhat different thinking on the underlying issues, so the views expressed by one of us should not necessarily be imputed to the other.)In this opening post, I will set forth Gingrich’s proposal to abolish judgeships. At the outset, let me emphasize that...

Discussing a National Review piece criticizing Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh offered some thoughts on how the publication has changed since its founding: “National Review used to, indisputably, it was the voice of conservatism. There was no question. Now, it’s not so much that, as it is the voice of Republicanism, which could also be said to be the inside the beltway or Washington-New York conservatism.” This perception of National Review was echoed by Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III in a post on Twitter in which suggested National Review has abandoned its original vision established when the publication...

Brent Bozell, a nephew of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., who founded National Review magazine in 1955, and whose father, Leo Brent Bozell, collaborated with Buckley for many years at NR, today dismissed the magazine as having lost the identity forged for it by its founder. “National Review's endorsement of Romney & Huntsman proves only that this is no longer the magazine of William F. Buckley Jr. My uncle would be appalled,” said Bozell in postings on Facebook and on Twitter. In its Dec. 14 “The Editors" page, National Review published an editorial entitled “Winnowing the Field,” which flippantly...

The December 31 issue of National Review — the last one before the Iowa caucuses — will feature a cover of Newt Gingrich appearing as “Marvin the Martian,” which some of have suggested could be one of the most memorable covers of the bi-weekly magazine. The cover story is the latest in a series of eyebrow-raising moves by the magazine, often considered to be the gold standard for periodicals in conservative politics. On Wednesday afternoon, its editorial page came out vehemently against Gingrich, warning his nomination would place the White House out of reach for the GOP. Mark Steyn, one...

CNS News catches Rush Limbaugh in a reflective mood yesterday after National Review’s anyone-but-Newt-or-Perry editorial earlier this week. Instead of railing about the attack on two of the Republican candidates in the field, Rush muses on how little influence NR has these days, and how it’s much more the voice of Beltway Republicanism than actual conservatism these days, and questioned whether it has any real impact at all anymore: “National Review used to, indisputably, it was the voice of conservatism. There was no question. Now, it’s not so much that, as it is the voice of Republicanism, which could also...

One of our co-founders, Ben Domenech, produces one of the best daily reads in my inbox. It’s the Transom. If you do not subscribe, you should. And if you do subscribe, today you got Ben’s thoughts on the two big conservative endorsements for Mitt Romney. I think he hits the nail on the head and it is very much worth sharing. Today the Washington Examiner and National Review endorse Mitt Romney. The Examiner does so honestly and forthrightly – you can read their rationale here. http://vlt.tc/1k1 I disagree with them, but as I’ve said before, I limit my assessment of...

Re that NR editorial, I would like, politely, to dissent from my colleagues’ dismissal of Perry and Bachmann. In the former case, a handful of poor debate performances should not disqualify a man from executive responsibility: Our age’s veneration for men with “nothing to do but think and talk” (in Churchill’s words, on the sort of chaps he didn’t want in his war cabinet) is one reason why the Western world is sliding off a cliff. In the latter case, Congresswoman Bachmann has fought a principled, conservative campaign with only one significant misstep — her overreach on the Gardasil business....

“We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich would be to blow the opportunity to win the White House next year. —The Editor”

We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich would be to blow the opportunity to win the White House next year. —The Editors

As the early primaries draw near, Newt Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel could be the millions he was paid by Freddie Mac. Yesterday morning, top rival Mitt Romney called on Gingrich to return the money during a Fox News appearance. For Gingrich, Romney’s request was merely the latest in series of blows since Bloomberg first reported the payments, estimated at $1.6–$1.8 million, in mid-November. “It’s a perfect argument against Gingrich because it ties him to the sleazy practices of the beltway when he is trying to run as an outsider,” observes Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University...

NRO POLL Would you trust Newt as president? Yes No

The Tea Party’s limited-government, constitutional heart is in the right place. But it needs much better guidance about how the Constitution works in wartime. The defense-authorization bill currently under congressional consideration contains some unremarkable, largely redundant provisions about the treatment of enemy combatants. Naturally, the now-familiar alliance of leftists and libertarian extremists — self-proclaimed “constitutionalists” all — attacked with their signature “sky is falling” equanimity. On Wednesday, my column addressed some of the more hysterical arguments posited by Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano. The real action, however, was taking place on the Senate floor, where Tea Party favorite Rand Paul...

NOVEMBER 18, 2011 Cain’s Knowledge-Deficit Disorder He is running for president knowing little about major matters of public import. Poor Rick Perry. His “brain freeze” is indelible, otherwise it would forever be eclipsed by Herman Cain’s more cringe-inducing meanderings on Libya. At a meeting with the editors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain was asked whether he agreed with Pres. Barack Obama’s handling of Libya. You would think he had been asked who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, Cain’s joshing description of a prototypical gotcha foreign-policy question. What ensued was the longest five minutes of an editorial-board meeting ever. Cain...

In a previous legal life, I worked as a litigator at a large law firm and on occasion worked (as a defense attorney) for various corporate clients in sexual harassment cases. So I read Politico’s story with the jaundiced eye of someone who’s represented more than one corporate executive accused of harassment. From what I read, I found the story profoundly underwhelming. Before I go on, let me first make clear that I don’t know the actual facts in the case. I have no idea what Herman Cain did or did not do, and I have no idea whether the...

I am willing to give Herman Cain the benefit of the doubt and assume that the sexual-harassment allegation(s) against him was entirely baseless. Here is what troubles me. Mr. Cain says: “If the Restaurant Association did a settlement, I wasn’t even aware of it, and I hope it wasn’t for much, because nothing happened. So if there was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other offices that worked for me at the association, so the answer is absolutely not.” Okay, so if I’m reading that quote right, then: 1. Herman Cain, in his role as head of...

The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it. And when it comes to lousy wind deals, General Electric’s Shepherds Flat project in northern Oregon is a real stinker. I’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. It’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called “Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.”

A reminder about the totalitarian temptationThe Washington Post’s culture critic, Philip Kennicott, recently took to the pages of his paper to note the “cognitive dissonance” between ingrained “habits of homophobia” in American culture, on the one hand, and a recognition that “overt bigotry is no longer acceptable in the public square,” on the other. As an example of those who resolve this dissonance by holding fast to their homophobic prejudices, Kennicott cited Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who had remarked on the similarities between the Empire State’s recent re-definition of marriage and the kind of human engineering attempted by...

It was one of those perfect nights here in Los Angeles. Ginger and her girlfriends had left, the hot tub was quiet, and the lights of downtown sparkled like Festivus-tree ornaments down the hill from my palatial pad in Echo Park. Only the occasional sound of gangbanger gunfire from Boyle Heights marred the stillness of the evening as I sat sipping my Jägermeister and contemplating the infinite void that my father, the sainted “Che” Kahane, had raised me to believe is my destiny. And then the phone rang. “So listen, Dave,” said my agent, breathlessly. It wasn’t like her to...

The Battle from Waterloo Representative Bachmann runs for president BY ROBERT COSTA Waterloo, Iowa Near the cornfields, her parents danced. On hot summer nights in the Sixties, when things were good and the kids were young, David and Jean Amble would shimmy to the music of Ray Charles and Bill Haley at the Electric Park Ballroom. Down the road, their headstrong daughter, Michele, would order ice-cream cones for her three brothers at Jensen’s Dairy Queen, two blocks from the family’s working-class home. The day before she announced her presidential campaign in late June, the former Michele Amble, now Representative Bachmann...

William A. Rusher, the long-time publisher of National Review, great friend of John Ashbrook and a member of the Ashbrook Center's board of advisers, has died at the age of 87 out in California.

And it is also true of nations. Nations are shaped by their founders, often for many generations and centuries after those founders are gone. The culture and character of America reflects the nature and convictions of the men and women who founded it. I’ve often imagined what it must have been like for those very first people who left Europe to immigrate to America. They left behind home, family, security and predictability in exchange for a life-threatening ocean passage, the possibility of hostile indigenous people, and uncertain shelter, food and climate. In the late 1500’s, colonies failed in Virginia —...

Rounding Up the GunsWhat not to do The go-to expert on foolish rushes to further restrict guns after a shooting is John R. Lott Jr. An economist and foxnews.com contributor, he is author of the authoritative More Guns, Less Crime, now in its third edition. National Review Online talked to him about the Tucson attack.Kathryn Jean Lopez: Are you outraged that Jared Lee Loughner was not marked a “prohibited possessor� when he went to Sportman’s Warehouse to buy a gun on November 30?John R. Lott Jr.: No, I am not. While about 90 percent of murderers have a violent criminal...

According to Max Emanuel Donner's glowing report, former Arkansas Governor and likely 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, won the hearts of potential supporters in Yerba Buena, California on Sunday night. "The admiring crowd and frequent photo ops with the Presidential aura of this Presidential landmark are ideally suited to politics in the age of social networking. Hundreds of enthusiastic fans had their pictures taken with Huckabee smiling with Presidential memorabilia in the background.This enthusiasm was quite genuine, inspired mainly by Huckabee’s own likeability and approachability. Visitor Charles Rhee came to the Nixon Library for the first time, saying “I’m here...

Here is what pollster the Tarrance Group is telling the Carly Fiorina campaign: The race for the US Senate in California is an actual dead heat, with both Fiorina and Boxer standing right at forty-four percent (44%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) of voters are voting for one of the other candidates, and 5% are undecided . . . It is also important to note that Boxer’s negatives are fully institutionalized to the point where she has never once broken the 45% level in terms of her ballot strength, and there are a “hard” fifty-three percent (53%) of voters...

...When Mitch Daniels said last week that a VAT as a part of tax reform is worth exploring, he obviously didn't see the damage that a VAT did to Europe. The simple fact is that a VAT in the U.S. would lead, over time, to higher aggregate levels of taxation. It's likely that the other taxes will rise as a VAT grows. The burden of proof is on those who say this won't happen, since the facts of history show otherwise. As for a VAT as a total replacement, that's just not going to happen. If there was ever enough...

The love-hate relationship between the late William F. Buckley, and his friend and former employee, the recently deceased Joseph Sobran, is such a fascinating story that it can make up the subject of a book or movie. It is comparable to the legendary friendship between the 18th Century British literary figure, Samuel Johnson, and his biographer, James Boswell. The Buckley/Sobran relationship was a story I followed closely since the mid 1980s, when Sobran caused controversy by publishing anti-Israel polemics, which caused Buckley deep embarrassment. The relation between the two men is well documented in William F. Buckely's biography written by...

Our former NR colleague, Joe Sobran, passed away today after a long battle with a variety of ailments. He was relatively young, just 64, and while physically beaten at the end, he also departed spiritually triumphant.   Surely, in short order, there will be ample reflection — much of it critical — on the hyper-talented, hyper-controversial writer. There will be a recounting of his history at NR, the break, the following years, and Joe’s soured relationship with WFB (happily, they rekindled their friendship before Bill passed away). Good, let’s discuss all that, and more. But later. Right now, let us,...

House Republicans have been relatively successful this week at presenting a united front around their “Pledge to America,” but only through a strategic outreach campaign to lawmakers, media and outside groups, that has managed to keep deep dissatisfaction over several key issues largely under wraps. Still, interviews with Republican aides reveal that many in the GOP caucus are unhappy that there was no earmark ban and no promise to pass a balanced budget amendment in the proposal, which was unveiled Thursday by House Minority Leader John Boehner. The inclusion of a health insurance provision considered to be mandate angered many...

Joe Sobran's impending death was made known by Dr. David Allen White. Dr. White was a frequent guest lecturer at Bishop Williamson's St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary and is an endorser of John Sharpe's Neo-Conned series. Yesterday, Dr. White sent a public note to the Catholic Family News concerning Joe Sobran's ill health. White made a heartfelt appeal for prayers for Sobran. In addition to this, White wrote: "We thanked him for his good work over the years, especially for being a truth-teller about you-know-whom and for having suffered for it. We then prayed the rosary together. (Emphasis Supplied.)"