Imagine if you could banish all opposition from the island, legislate unchecked, and prove that you were right and they were wrong all along.Welcome to California. With a supermajority and control of the governor’s mansion, California Democrats can do anything they want. The NYT: The Democratic Party has controlled the California Legislature for a nearly […]

As Via Meadia noted yesterday, Shinzo Abe’s LDP cruised to victory in Japan’s elections yesterday, winning 294 seats. In coalition with its partner New Komeito, which won 31 seats, the LDP will have enough votes to override the Democratic Party of Japan-controlled upper house. The market is already responding to the new PM’s likely plans: […]

Farouk al-Sharaa, Syria’s longtime vice president, voiced the sentiment of many on Sunday when he said that both sides of the Syrian civil war are losing. With neither Assad nor the rebels able to achieve outright victory and Syrians fleeing to neighboring countries as their beautiful cities are bombed and burned into rubble, few people would […]

If we can get some kind of grip on the power of money in our electoral politics by going directly after television, then maybe we can proceed to assault the next great—indeed, probably the greatest—bastion of plutocratic corruption in the United States: our banking and financial elite.Over the past four years I have come to […]

Now is not a good time to be a university professor. For centuries, the profession has remained essentially the same, with professors splitting their time between research and teaching, presiding over courses in which students living nearby or on campus came in year in and year out to hear the same lectures and take the […]

The terrible tragedy in Connecticut on Friday has weighed on all of our minds this weekend. All of our hopes and prayers go out to the families and friends of those affected, and we hope that everyone in the community gets the help and support they need in the difficult weeks and months ahead.In Michigan, […]

Japan’s election results are in, and the vote has gone as expected. As most predicted, the Liberal Democratic Party have won elections handily, taking power from the Democratic Party, which has cycled through three Prime Ministers over the past four years. Now, the charismatic, nationalist LDP leader Shinzo Abe will assume the premiership for the […]

On the domestic front at least, Michigan’s battles over right-to-work laws and other union rights are the most important story of the week. If right-to-work laws continue their sweep of the Rust Belt and unions continue to decline in their old heartland, there will be far-reaching implications that could affect the development of national politics […]

Egypt’s new Islamist-shaped, hastily drafted constitution just won approval in the first round of voting, winning about 56 percent of the vote. The country is now preparing for a second round, where most analysts expect the voters to approve the constitution by a wider margin. Reuters reports: Egyptians voted narrowly in favor of a constitution shaped […]

My family has always had a low taste for over the top hymn lyrics. My mother’s favorite line in the 1940 Episcopal hymnal came from James Russell Lowell’s protest against the Mexican War: “By the light of burning martyrs, Jesus’ bleeding feet I track.” As I kid, I was struck by a couple of verses […]