Soccer may be the world’s most popular sport, but it often appears to be run more like professional wrestling than like anything else.  Corruption is rife throughout international soccer, and Brazil is no exception. The nation, which boasts one of the world’s most successful national teams, is set to host the 2014 World Cup, but […]

In Fairfax County, Virginia, (where some of the Mead descendants are negotiating the county’s excellent public schools) paper textbooks are becoming a thing of the past. New online social studies textbooks are cutting costs, lightening backpacks and upping student achievement. From the Washington Post: It is the Washington area’s most extensive foray into online textbooks, […]

The swiftly arriving era of federal penny-pinching portends big cutbacks in US foreign aid, reports the New York Times: America’s budget crisis at home is forcing the first significant cuts in overseas aid in nearly two decades, a retrenchment that officials and advocates say reflects the country’s diminishing ability to influence the world. […] Representative […]

The global market meltdown has continued overnight, as sharp falls in Asian market prepared the way for three to four percent declines in Europe.  The euro has fallen well below what as recently as a week ago looked like firm level of support at $1.35. The political and economic incompetence of Europe’s leadership is the […]

Horrible news for the Dems: Fanniegate is turning uglier still. Along with its evil twin Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae is one of the key institutions of the blue social model that provide government subsidies to the middle class.  Already implicated in the housing bubble and the proliferation of liar loans and bogus mortgage backed securities, […]

A Pakistani citizen can be arrested and indefinitely detained by the security services at any time. The rule of law does not seem to count. Perhaps thousands of Pakistanis have disappeared, but no one knows for sure. Where they are taken, what is being done to them, when they will be released, why they have […]

Campaign finance reform is dead.  Long live tax reform.The influence of “big money” on national politicians has long been a sticking point for liberal populists, and reforming our political system to “get money out of politics” has been a perennial liberal cause, uniting high minded good government types with union organizers (as long as it […]

The Syrian opposition is getting organized; good for them, but this is not news. The bigger story is where they are meeting: Istanbul. Turkey is continuing to move towards a Syrian policy based on regime change. From the Washington Post: Syrian dissidents meeting in Istanbul on Sunday announced the formation of a council uniting most […]

America's system of checks and balances usually works well, but not when it comes to fixing the Federal budget.

Austria-Hungary and the Soviet Union both lost empries. What can we learn from how they coped?