We’ve heard about the war against homelessness, but the hidden tragedy of second homelessness is something new. A new report from Smart Growth America, an anti-sprawl coalition, finds that federal housing policy subsidizes vacation homes at taxpayer expense. Through the federal Mortgage Interest Deduction, tens of billions of dollars ever year go toward second homes for wealthier […]

The Algerian hostage crisis continues to unfold in dramatic fashion: Reuters and other news agencies are reporting that dozens of hostages were able to escape their captors, while an as yet undetermined number were killed, when the Algerian military launched a rescue operation at a remote natural gas facility deep in the desert. A number […]

Well isn’t this a new twist on the American dream: The BBC reports that a creative American software developer outsourced his own job to China. Yes, you read that right. An employee paid a Chinese firm one-fifth of his hefty salary to do his job while he browsed cat videos on the web.His ploy was apparently discovered […]

As the furore that erupted across India over the gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi continues to simmer a month after the horrific incident, some people, including Prem Shankar Jha, a seasoned journalist and one of the sharpest commentators on Indian affairs anywhere, noticed that something very interesting is going on: Indians are losing faith in […]

Here‘s what happens when people start losing faith in paper money: A German populace, worried by a potential break-up of the euro, started asking increasingly wild questions about the gold holdings. The issue was then supercharged by a report by the federal Court of Auditors that criticised the Bundesbank for having insufficient access to the […]

After every mass shooting, the talk of the nation turns to gun control, and the particular horror of the Newtown tragedy has made the conversation louder than ever.New York lawmakers passed the strictest gun laws in the country on Tuesday, and yesterday President Obama released a set of executive orders that marked the strongest action […]

A company is using 3D printing to shoot holes in the idea of restricting the sale and use of guns in America. Last weekend Defense Distributed pointed out the uselessness of gun control measures, like those the Obama administration rolled out yesterday, by printing out a high capacity magazine with a 3D printer. Back in November […]

In the last couple of years I’ve been writing about the death of the blue social model. By that I mean that the characteristic form of 20th century industrial democracy has come unglued, and that the advanced industrial democracies around the world must adjust to basic changes in the way the world works.For those who missed […]

A top Harvard scholar has given green lobbyists and policy makers a solid F for their efforts to enact climate change legislation. Theda Skocpol, a political scientist, isn’t blaming climate change skeptics but the greens themselves for America’s inaction on global warming. The Guardian reports: In a research paper, due to be presented at a Harvard forum next […]

Fresh on the heels of the announcement of a major bilateral trade effort with the EU, the U.S. is now looking towards another large deal with twenty of its largest trading partners, reports the WSJ. This negotiation would focus on the export of services. The specifics will be hammered out over the next few months at talks in […]