Bad Boy Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, fresh from taking on collective bargaining and triumphant after winning the recall election, is headed for more controversy, more upheaval and more angry squeals as he prepares to go after yet another sacred cow. His next mission is to take on Wisconsin’s higher education system. On June 19, […]

A gold and turquoise ring that belonged to Jane Austen, a Mozart among English novelists if one thinks about the dazzling perfection and brilliant invention of her prose, or perhaps a Vermeer if one considers the intense observation and painstaking description of her portrayals, is being auctioned off at Sotheby’s next week in London. The […]

Facing a grim job market for which they are unprepared and feeling cheated of not insignificant amounts of time and money, university graduates are ramping up their criticism of colleges. In case this scenario sounds familiar, it’s happening in China.The Wall Street Journal notes that a 2006 survey on Chinese attitudes to higher education has resurfaced […]

We’d dared to hope at Via Meadia that the last European pseudo-fix for the euro would be one of the more successful — that it might buy a few weeks or even a couple of months of time before the whiff of panic returned to world financial markets.We were wrong. We reported earlier this week […]

California is going for broke, and the country’s most dysfunctional and badly governed state, enmeshed in debt and unable to manage its yearly budget, has voted to borrow billions of dollars it can’t afford to begin a train project that it may never be able to finish — and that it may not even need.A […]

As the world economy once again appears to be slamming on the brakes, central bankers around the world are now preparing for a new round of lowered interest rates as a measure to kickstart the economy.As the Wall Street Journal reports, many of these measures are complicated and rather extreme: The European Central Bank cut […]

After eight years of study and hours of entrenched debate, the Presbyterian Church of America has voted not to divest in certain companies that supply equipment to Israel that is used in its occupation of the West Bank. Yesterday’s decision by the church’s general assembly makes the Presybterians the third major American church to just say […]

The news has come that Manaf Tlass, an intimate Republican Guard friend of Bashir al-Assad, has defected to Turkey. As the press is saying, this is the most significant inner-circle defection since the beginning of the Syrian uprising. It could well be a sign that the inner circle is cracking in the belief that Assad […]

Democrats are increasingly divided; at the national level the strong majority of elected representatives in Congress and President Obama himself are generally associated with what Governor Dean famously called the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” These are the people who reject ex-President Bill Clinton’s argument that Democrats had to adjust to economic and political […]

When Greek voters headed to the polls last month, they were presented with a choice between a motley assortment of radical groups and the mainstream parties. Contrary to the fears of many observers, the center-right New Democracy party eventually prevailed, and with center-left and equally establishmentarian PASOK, the Greek center held, barely. But now the […]