The decision by the House of Representatives to end the House Page program is appropriate and wise.  At up to $80,000 per page, the cost was wildly excessive given the cuts our government needs to make.  And the program had not only been made obsolete by technology (in an age of cell phones, email and […]

Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker has a fascinating profile of Michele Bachmann in this week’s issue. From the article: Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be […]

Tunisia’s upcoming parliamentary election has failed to inspire many of the people who first organized the Revolution. Shockingly, very poor people who have never had any experience of democratic governance care more about jobs, electricity and paved roads than about democratic election contests between people much richer and better connected than themselves. Adel Kahri, a […]

Last week we put up a post on HSBC’s plan to ax 30,000 employees this year. Now we hear that it’s not just HSBC: the fifty largest banks in the world are poised to cut almost 101,000 jobs between them, according to Bloomberg. These are the biggest cuts since the recession struck in 2008.The smartest […]

In the newest issue of The American Interest, a short essay by Professor of Middle Eastern studies Karim Mezran succinctly details Libya’s historical divisions, the 1911 Libyan revolt against Italy, and European meddling in North Africa — and their impact on today’s conflict in Libya. Take a look at the full article here. Meanwhile, some food for […]

As the news from London has grown darker, I’m remembering the year I lived there as a kid.  My father had switched parishes with a Church of England priest in Esher; after being licensed under the Colonial Clergy Act he settled in for a year as visiting rector.These days Esher teems with American expats; in […]

“The information contained in our shared [genome] is so fundamental, and requires so much further research to understand its utility, that patenting it at the earliest stage is like putting up a whole lot of unnecessary toll booths on the road to discovery”, said National Institutes of Health Director and former head of the Human […]

In an article titled “Americans Want the Honor of ‘Earned Success“, Michael Barone riffs thoughtfully on some themes from my recent long form blog post “The Progressive Crisis.” Barone is one of the shrewdest and best informed political observers we have; his yearbook on American politics is the basic text for serious political operatives.  Both […]

From überblogger Mickey Kaus comes the link to an ad for an obviously vital position with the US government: an Associate Administrator of Administration for the Department of Transportation in Washington DC.  The job pays anywhere between a miserly $119,554 to a slightly more reasonable $179,000, so it’s a financial sacrifice, but you have the […]

Gaddafi’s forces are using witchcraft and spells in the fight against Libyan rebels. A Libyan fighter over the weekend discovered pages of African black magic spells on the battlefield that would protect a person from bullets. The accusations of black magic appear to be confirmed by the story of a Gaddafi soldier walking in the […]