The Week: Politics

In 1979, the black-footed ferret was declared extinct. Then a woman named Lucille Hogg discovered a handful of the little critters — popularly known as prairie dog hunters, on account of their primary food source — sitting on her doorstep, carried from goodness knows where by her dog.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

Last Halloween at the White House, first lady Melania Trump came face-to-face with a miniature version of herself. What stands out the most in photos of the encounter is the child's costume: white Adidas sneakers, black slacks, a white collared shirt.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

What if conservatives' longstanding obsession with maximizing GDP growth and efficiency has actually been a catastrophic blunder? Many leftists and progressives might respond, "Well, duh."
The news is that one of conservatism's big thinkers may agree.

The first vote I ever cast was for Bill Clinton in 1996, when I was 6 years old. I have been unable to discover a tally of the official vote from that year's Nickelodeon "Kids Pick the President" election, but I seem to remember a landslide victory for the Man From Hope.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

40 percent.
This number comes up over and over again in the discussion around Medicare-for-all. It supposedly represents how much larger current Medicare payments (what the government pays health-care providers) are from private insurance payments to doctors, according to a widely cited paper written by Charles Blahous of the libertarian Mercatus Center — and thus how much health-care spending would have to be cut under Medicare-for-all.

At least when Democrats lost their minds for Jon Ossoff in 2017, the quixotic electoral effort in Georgia had the virtue of novelty. In 2018, their massive bet on Robert "Beto" O'Rourke in Texas might cost them any chance to take control of the Senate.

If journalist Jamal Khashoggi was in fact murdered by agents of the Saudi government, that would certainly be awful, a crime worth lamenting and condemning. But is it reasonable for the killing to inspire greater outrage and aggrievement than Saudi Arabia's multi-year bombardment of Yemen, which has killed of tens of thousands of civilians, with American backing, weapons, and logistical support?