The recent release of a series of 1930s-era two-reelers reminds us how great Buster Keaton was even when he wasn't at this best. The Great Stone Face was no slapstick peddler, but a true harbinger of film comedy as an art form.

Two new books show us that racism is alive and all too well—not just in America, but in segregated cities around the world.

The HBO television series The Wire, which aired between 2002 and 2008, brought Americans face-to-face with the stubborn and disturbing reality of inner-city life.

The Newt Gingrich campaign amused the pols and pundits, but what it says about future primary contests isn't the least bit funny.

American politics today is far more volatile than in the past. That makes predicting what will happen in November a temptation for fools. Expect a massive failure to resist temptation.

The Congressional Black Caucus is no longer the flamboyant organization it was at its birth in the late 1960s, but it's still worth listening to.

Federal anti-poverty efforts have relied too heavily on solutions cooked up in academia and inside the Beltway. We already have plenty of proven programs—at the local level.

American society is neither post-racial nor stuck fast in a racist past, but fantasies of monolithic racial communities are distorting our national conversation on race and public policy.

Not long ago Via Meadia discussed the possibility of an internationalization of the Syria crisis, with Turkey and Iran being the chief belligerents. Events this week are edging closer to a wider Middle East war amid the crumbling wreckage of the Levant:First, on Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan declared his government’s willingness to invade Syria to crush what might […]

Take a look at the latest grim economic data from Europe: Industrial output in Spain dropped for the tenth straight month, and now the German economy appears to be spluttering: German exports, a major source of growth for the country, fell in June for the month, after recovering the previous month from an earlier decline, […]