In a wild goose chase for money, cash-strapped cities and states across the U.S. are turning to private companies that collect fees from citizens for misdemeanor crimes. Here’s what happens, as reported in yesterday’s NYT. Say you’re pulled over by a traffic cop for a driving violation and charged with a fine. If you can’t pay immediately, […]

Through the gloom of so much bad news for the world economic picture shines a ray of hope: the Chinese real estate market may be picking up. The most recent survey shows prices are rising in China’s 100 largest cities, the first increase in nine months. Real-estate investment and property sales are also on the rise.As […]

There’s tear gas in the air and violence in the streets. Could those be the first signs of spring in Khartoum?That might be good news. Combining economic stagnation, authoritarian oppression, and a history of genocide, Sudan is one of those rare places where a revolution could hardly make things worse.Sudan wasn’t exactly a bedrock of […]

A group of California high school students is demonstrating the future of education with an extracurricular club they call the Paly Entrepreneurs Club. This is the kind of thing we need to see more of in schools across the country. It shouldn’t just be entrepreneurial extracurricular clubs. It should be Entrepreneurship 101, at the high school or even […]

Anti-Semitism in America has, with some notable exceptions, been limited to the laughable fringe—witness the spectacle of “crazy anti-Semitic Elmo” being carted away from Central Park. In Iran, on the other hand, out-to-lunch, looney tunes Jew hatred is the basis for mainstream, respectable socio-political analysis, as revealed in the state-run Fars News Agency: Iranian First […]

Rarely does one story monopolize coverage in nearly all news media in Turkey—the downing of a Turkish jet by Syrian forces did just that this week (Anadolu Ajansı). Less than 24 hours after the incident, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President Abdullah Gül, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu expressed outrage at the attack, claiming that […]

The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) was founded in 1880 as an association of Biblical scholars with a Protestant theological commitment. Since then it has developed into the largest professional association concerned with Biblical and related studies; it is now strongly committed to a theologically neutral methodology of modern historical scholarship. The SBL has just […]

Reportedly, Chief Justice John Roberts was initially inclined to strike down the individual mandate in Obamacare but switched sides after something changed his mind. Speculation has been that it was concern over the Supreme Court’s prestige and susceptibility to public criticism. But I think there was an irresolvable dispute over a crucial question of constitutional […]

Has the Arab spring come to Khartoum? Since anti-regime protests began in Sudan on June 16, that question has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue, both Sudanese and outsider. The protesters have hopes that President Omar al Bashir will face the same fate as Tunisia’s ex-President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s ex-President […]

Wall Street as we know it may not be long for this world—though the movement that occupied its parks has little to do with it. The New York Times reports that, despite good years for America’s investment bankers, the number of mid-level financial positions on the Street is slowly dropping as banks escape the city’s regulations, […]