At the Huffington Post, Kil Huh, Director of Research at the Pew Center on the States, feeds Via Meadia with more ammunition in our ongoing struggle to publicize the coming pension disaster. Huh warns that 34 state pensions are less than 80 percent funded and falling, and underfunding of these pensions is just as much of a long-term problem […]

Japan’s assertion of its claims to disputed islands in the East China Sea has earned it stern rebukes from both China and South Korea. Tokyo released its annual defense white paper on Tuesday, and for the eighth year in a row it avowed ownership of the disputed Senkaku Islands. China also claims the uninhabited islets.Bloomberg […]

A while ago on this blog I commented on a judgment by a Texas court which ruled that so-called “imprecatory prayer” (that is, prayer that asks God to inflict harm) is protected speech under the first amendment of the US constitution.  The court asserted that there was no evidence that the prayer had actually harmed […]

As Governor Romney returns to the U.S., somewhat battered by foreign and domestic press responses to his three-nation swing, most observers are paying attention to the impact the turbulence will have on the presidential race.That’s a mistake; it won’t have much. We are still more than three months away from the election, and although political […]

Mitt Romney’s midsummer foray into foreign policy has left Democrats giddy with schadenfreude. More than his stumbling performance abroad, however, it’s the substance of Romney’s views that ought to really give voters pause.  Or, more precisely, lack of substance. With less than 100 days to go, Romney has yet to develop a coherent outlook on […]

The boundary disputes unsettling the peace of Asia don’t just involve tiny islands in the South China Sea. Himalayan glaciers and valleys are also involved — and it’s not just India and Pakistan who are at daggers drawn in the Asian high country.India and China have never settled their disputed land border. They fought a […]

A string of deadly bombings, ominous threats broadcast online, and a chain of assassinations of city councilmen: witness the opening act of the return of al-Qaeda in Iraq.The NYT reports that local representatives, or mukhtars, in Baquba have resigned en masse after being targeted for assassination by al-Qaeda fighters attempting to renew their presence in one of their old neighborhoods: [The […]

We’ve called for a national debate on the so-called Asia pivot announced at the start of this year, and it appears we’re starting to get one. The New York Times has a brief article summarizing a study commissioned by Senators Carl Levin, Jim Webb, and John McCain.The main criticism found in the report seems to be that the specifics […]

The economy is so bad that even Harvard is having to cut costs these days. The Wall Street Journal reports that, after the recession lowered the university’s endowment by nearly $5 billion, it has been putting a number of projects on hold to save cash.At first, the cuts were skin-deep ones, limited to postponing construction projects […]

Almost two weeks since the terrorist bombing of a busload of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, officials in Sofia remain reluctant to assign responsibility for the attack, despite firm insistence by U.S. authorities that a Hezbollah cell carried out the deadly strike.Bulgaria’s reticence undoubtedly reflects the fecklessness of the European Union, which is determined to avoid […]