Europe seems to have made up its mind about one piece of its financial crisis: the leading EU countries now believe that the euro and the European economy will both survive a disorderly Greek default that drives the country out of the euro.Greece’s threat to the euro area has always been financial.  Its economy is […]

Green complaints about fracking reached a fever pitch over the past year, but Pennsylvania apparently wasn’t listening to them. The Wall Street Journal reports that the state legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that will make state laws more favorable to fracking, culminating a debate that has been raging ever since massive quantities of shale […]

New York City is banning Sunday school, figuratively speaking. From the NYT: Because of a recent federal court ruling that upheld a city policy of not allowing religious services in public schools, dozens of congregations throughout New York have been told that they must move; next Sunday will be the last time they will be […]

Egypt’s decision to press ahead with criminal trials for 43 people, including 19 Americans, has set relations with Washington teetering on the edge of the cliff. Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and Joe Lieberman suggested Egypt risks a “disastrous…rupture in relations.”During the French Revolution, crazed paranoid suspicions of foreign and aristocratic plots swept the distracted […]

The European debt crisis may be grabbing the headlines, but something much darker is happening in Europe’s core. In an excellent piece in The American Interest, Charles Gati detailed the return of authoritarian politics to Hungary, where Viktor Orban’s government has pushed through controversial programs that restrict freedom of the press, limit the power of […]

Asked about his favorite joke, David Cameron once famously replied: “Nick Clegg.” That’s made both men a little uncomfortable since the hung parliament after the last British election forced Cameron to offer Clegg the post of Deputy Prime Minister in a coalition government, but life goes on.The PM may have a new punch line this […]

To most Americans, the U.S. Constitution is the foundation of our democracy, a clear manifestation of American values, and the reason for much of our success as a nation. Not so the New York Times. In a recent article, the Grey Lady appears bored with our aging charter, pining for the sexier constitutions of newer […]

Via Meadia has never shied from confronting the development world for its penchant for unseemly aid boondoggles. That doesn’t mean we’re intractable pessimists on Africa. Far from it.Consider one of the region’s problems: intra-African trade scarcely exists. As the WSJ reports, many African nations lack both adequate infrastructure and coherent border policies with neighbors, with […]

The Chicago Police Department is trying some rather unorthodox programs. This NYT story profiles a new course taught at Chicago’s police academy, where uniformed officers receive instruction from crime novelist Charlie Newton on how to improve their writing skills as preparation for writing police novels of their own.Via Meadia has nothing against the idea in […]

An inevitable question as we look at the demise of the 20th century economy is how shall we live? As the manufacturing that remains to us becomes more automated, reducing employment even as output climbs; as agriculture continues to need fewer hands; as outsourcing and technological change sweep through the knowledge guilds and the learned […]