Over at BuzzFeed Politics, columnist John Ellis has penned a provocative column about the collapse of the blue social model and the failure of both President Obama and Mitt Romney to face up to it: In a speech to the nation’s newspaper editors this morning, President Obama announced that he was running for re-election to […]

As Iraq tries to steady itself, Via Meadia has been losing sleep—particularly over how the Gulf Arab states and Iran use Iraq as a proxy battleground, supporting various political groups or militias in an ongoing struggle for control of politics and oil.Last week, fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, who has been hiding from Iraqi security in Kurdistan […]

As I’ve been writing about the crisis of the blue social model, I’ve mostly focused on its consequences for North American and European societies. Canada, the US and the countries of western and central Europe are the places where the blue model has become most solidly entrenched and fully developed, and in the first instance […]

The student loan market has become a classic blue model example of good intentions gone wrong. In the beginning, subsidized federal loans helped make a college diploma part of the American Dream, but over time the combination of rising tuition costs and some dubious choices regarding course selection have saddled students with increased debt levels […]

Maryland is one of the bluest states in the union. Obama won nearly 62 percent of the vote against McCain in 2008. Both of its senators and three-quarters of its representatives are Democrats. At the state level, Democrats control both houses with supermajorities, and its governor, Martin O’Malley, is a Democrat.Yet Maryland has just joined […]

The AP reports that Egypt’s Copts have pulled out of the drafting committee for the country’s new constitution: Egypt’s Coptic Church withdrew Monday from an Islam­ist-dominated committee that will draft the nation’s new constitution, and a leading Christian figure said the minority was never really represented to begin with.The move fed growing fears that Islamists […]

California’s embattled high-speed rail project has been attracting skeptics for some time—not least for its $100 billion price tag. But defenders of the program aren’t giving up the fight easily. The Wall Street Journal reports that the California High-Speed Rail Authority has now reduced cost estimates for the project to $68.4 billion, mainly by running […]

William Hughes Hamilton died on February 28, 2012, aged 87. His passing was barely noted in the media, a fact both sad and instructive. Along with a small group of other individuals, he attained sudden celebrity status in the 1960s as one of the founders of the so-called “death of God theology”. The phrase had […]

Update: Today, April 6, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad declared an independent state in northern Mali, the first assertion of Tuareg control of Timbuktu, their old capital, since 1591.What do you think of when you see or hear the word “Tuareg”? Most Americans, I think, are left utterly blank by the sight […]

It’s been a bad year for solar power. Last year’s Solyndra scandal was one of the biggest public relations setbacks the industry has faced in years. And in recent months, more solar companies have been filing for bankruptcy, and even those that remained have had difficulty securing the government-provided loan guarantees they depend on.Now yet […]