As President Obama travels to John Brown’s old stomping ground in Osawatomie, Kansas where Theodore Roosevelt made his New Nationalism speech in 1910, Newt Gingrich has announced that he is a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. If you asked Theodore Roosevelt what kind of Republican he was, he would — and did — tell you that he […]

The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified on today’s date in 1865, ending slavery throughout the United States.  (The Emancipation Proclamation had only ended slavery in territory controlled by the Confederacy as of January 1, 1863.)Hundreds of thousands died and billions of dollars in wealth and property perished in order […]

The basic facts in Europe have not changed.  Germany and France remain bitterly divided over the future of the European monetary system, and neither has the power to get what it wants.  Germany wants the rest of Europe to adopt German-style economic policies, but key countries like Italy, Spain and even France really can’t do […]

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin as Russia’s President next spring will once again align real and formal power in Russia, as they were during his earlier two terms in office. Although the Russian Prime Minister is nominally subordinate to the President, Putin has dominated Russian politics throughout Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency. As if to underscore […]

Regular next-day delivery of the mail has been a part of urban life in the English-speaking world for the last 200 years.  No more in the US, apparently; crushed under huge pension burdens, overstaffing, poor business decisions, senseless congressional mandates and competition like email and text messaging, the USPS is giving up overnight first-class mail. […]

Journalists who spent the last six months in Tahrir Square and talking to privileged, young western-educated Egyptians may have been surprised by the Islamist sweep in last week’s Egyptian elections, but few others were.  The Muslim Brotherhood has been around longest and has the deepest ties to poor communities inside of Cairo and rural communities […]

This apparently is what Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has done following a series of mysterious and extremely damaging explosions at Iran’s most sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile sites.According to the Telegraph, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been placed on a war footing, fighter planes are practicing intercept missions, and strategic materials are being […]

Vladimir Putin is still the tsar of all the Russias, but a few flakes of rust have appeared on the iron fist.  United Russia (URP), the political party of Vladamir Putin, appears to have won a majority in Parliament in Russia’s most recent elections. It is not quite the majority Putin would have wanted, and […]

America needs people who write and think out of passion for something other than tenure, and this NYT article tells of a group of young people who are doing just that. According to the article, twenty-somethings who found it impossible to break into New York’s publishing world are banding together to start their own literary […]

Cue the ominous horror movie music: news reports from China keep getting bleaker. Experienced China watchers have seen an economic slowdown on the horizon for some time now, and the potential for political unrest is rising. The indispensible Financial Times reports: Beijing has underlined its concern that an economic slowdown could lead to social unrest […]