Category: Washington Free Beacon

Is Mitteleuropa a place, an idea, or a myth? Geographically, Central Europe is roughly congruous with the bygone Habsburg Empire. It ranged eastward from Salzburg in the west to Cracow in Poland and Lemberg/Lviv in Ukraine. Its grand metropolitan centers were Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, rivaling if not outdoing Berlin in its glory days between Bismarck and Der Führer.

So much for the maps. But this space was also an idea and a state of mind, a multinational, multicultural cauldron bubbling with imagination and achievement. The fire underneath was extinguished by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Habsburg is now

“No sensible reader of the news could look at America and think it is flourishing,” sensibly writes Patrick Deneen in the first sentence of Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. His sharp observations that follow about the new version of the old conflict between the people and the elites illuminate destabilizing tensions within liberal democracy in America and elsewhere in the West. His restatement of the classical account of the mixed regime underscores the enduring political imperative to balance conflicting principles and interests. His astute reflections on the vices of expert knowledge and the virtues of custom and

(Reuters)—U.S. President Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy have reached a tentative deal to raise the federal government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, ending a months-long stalemate.

However, the deal was described in terms that indicated it may not be absolute, and without any celebration—an indication of the bitter tenor of the negotiations, and the difficult path it has to pass through Congress before the United States runs out of money to pay its debts in early June.

“I just got off the phone with the president a bit ago. After he wasted time and refused to negotiate

The Biden administration is set to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on a climate change podcast in India, which it hopes will inspire “changemakers” in the country to “use innovation and technology to solve the climate crisis.”

President Joe Biden’s State Department will award the $50,000 grant this summer through its embassy in New Delhi, documents show. The department hopes the “climate action podcast” will “enhance India’s commitment to combating climate change” and persuade Indian “entrepreneurs and innovators of opportunities” to live “lifestyles with more sustainable choices” and “see the United States as a source of partnership

What happened: Martha Stewart, 81, made history as the oldest person to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Wow!

Context: Stewart, a convicted felon, is even older than Joe Biden, the oldest president in American history. She was born in August 1941, several months before the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

What it means: There’s no escaping it, folks. We’re gonna have ourselves a Hot Octogenarian Summer in the USA. It’ll be the first of its kind in our nation’s history, and another giant leap on the road to progress.

A Democratic member of the New York City Council is under fire for comments that members of the council’s Italian Caucus say were bigoted.

Democrat Chi Ossé said during a Monday council meeting that a business should have been disqualified from getting a city contract because of its name, which is Italian. The council was discussing Dragonetti Brothers Landscaping, a contractor that had to pay more than $1 million in restitution last year for insurance fraud.

“I just want to say on Dragonetti, that name alone should have been the first red flag in terms of contracting with the

The FBI on May 8 raided the home of Timothy Burke, a liberal journalist who worked as the Daily Beast‘s director of video. Documents recently obtained by the Tampa Bay Times show the raid was in connection with the leaked Fox News clips that went viral on social media in early May.

The Times reported on Friday that it had obtained a letter from a federal prosecutor that had been sent to Fox News. While the letter does not explicitly name Burke, it does confirm that the raid on his house was in connection with a third party

President Joe Biden, 80, continues to fight a losing battle against the numbers that appear on his teleprompter. This week he claimed once again to have reduced the deficit by “1.1, 1.7 trillion dollars,” a lie so blatant even the Washington Post gave it a “Bottomless Pinocchio” rating.

The commander in chief struggles to make sense even when using the word “number” in a sentence. “The fact that they are,” he said this week at the G7 Summit in Japan. “We provided for the number we got a lot of input from.” Biden also claimed to have

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to defend President Joe Biden’s weekend travel plans as Democrats voice their anger over his leaving town and failure to negotiate with House Republicans on the debt ceiling. 

“What I can say is that the president can deal with this issue anywhere he is,” Jean-Pierre told reporters about Biden’s plans to visit Camp David and Delaware this weekend. Negotiations between the White House and House Republicans over the debt ceiling may continue through Memorial Day weekend as the potential default date of June 1 looms. 

Republicans insist Biden must reel in spending

Fourteen-term congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee in March announced her intention to “come home to be your mayor for the city of Houston.” The prominent Texas Democrat’s anti-police record, however, seems to be hurting her chances to win the local post, according to a poll.

In a contentious race that includes seven candidates, 19 percent of voters back Jackson Lee, compared with 20 percent who support Democratic state legislator John Whitmire, a Ragnar Research Partners poll shows. Jackson Lee is even worse off in a head-to-head matchup against Whitmire, with just 33 percent backing Jackson Lee and 45 percent supporting