Apparently, the people who know Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez best and work with him most closely think he’s a liar. That’s the only possible reason why, despite Chavez’s frequent and continuing claims that his cancer (type and status still held as a secret) has miraculously been cured, his entourage is erupting in a mad scramble […]

David Ignatius thinks that “it’s time for Syrian revolutionaries to take ‘yes’ for an answer from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” The Washington Post columnist believes that an opposition that, by some estimates, has already suffered more than 10,000 dead, should “back a U.N.-sponsored ‘managed transition’ of power there, rather than rolling on toward a civil […]

There is an old adage which states that history is written by the winners. No doubt this is generally true, and the unstated premise of this adage certainly makes logical sense: Those who die in a failed military campaign, after all, are not going to be writing anything. But sometimes history is not even written […]

After oral arguments before the Supreme Court this week, the odds that the Court will strike the individual mandate rose sharply; Intrade markets after the hearings showed bettors thought there was a 62 percent chance that the mandate will fall.I can’t tell you whether the law is unconstitutional; I can’t even tell you whether the […]

Fearing huge losses at the next election, Israel’s largest opposition party, Kadima, has removed Tzipi Livni as its leader. Livni was foreign minister in the previous government and is one of Israel’s strongest advocates for peace with the Palestinians. Her replacement, Shaul Mofaz, is a former army chief-of-staff and ex-defense minister.The FT‘s political post-mortem on Livni’s […]

No surprises here: A new Gallup poll reports that Americans are still broadly skeptical of the Green agenda, currently putting economic growth ahead of the environment by 49 percent to 41 percent. And moderates are increasingly joining conservatives in the opinion that economic growth should be a priority even if it incurs some environmental damage.Gallup polls […]

Britain’s Channel 4 News aired a segment earlier this week that shows Syrian activists faking some parts of videos they broadcast on YouTube. In one instance, activists record themselves asking the international community for help, with black smoke swirling in the background; the activists had set the fire themselves before turning on the video camera.We […]

The situation in the West Bank is deteriorating, according to the Washington Post. In addition to a budget deficit that now tops $1 billion and a decline in the foreign aid that the area relies on, the Palestinian Authority is facing political pressures: “Most of the money is spent on security, and the security is […]

The”BRICS” are holding their fourth annual summit in India today; don’t expect world-shaping events to come from it. The grouping may have been heralded as an alternative to the Western-dominated international system, but it can‘t even establish coherent policy agenda, much less assume a global leadership role.It shouldn’t be surprising the BRICS can’t find much to […]

Earlier this year, European political junkies were treated to one of the odder displays in recent memory: a German Chancellor planning campaign stops in France for the election of a French president. This would have been unimaginable at nearly any other point in the two countries’ history; many viewed it as a sign that the […]