A number of law school applicants are getting offers that sound too good to be true. Growing increasingly desperate for highly qualified students, Washington University School of Law has begun offering applicants a free ride via full tuition scholarships, as long as they respond within 24 hours of receiving the offer.On the surface, this sounds like a […]

The Washington Post is following the lead of the NYT’s bleak new take on the White House’s Middle East policy. As Libya seethes, Egypt crashes, and Syria burns, fewer and fewer of the President’s erstwhile disciples in the media understand his administration’s continuing fixation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The WaPo editorial board writes: The intense focus of Secretary of […]

Tragedy struck in the idyllic town of Lac Megantic, Quebec this weekend. A 73-car oil-laden train derailed and exploded early Saturday. Five people died, and the crash site is still too hot—more than 50 hours later—to look for 40 missing people.The implications of the accident extend much further than the small border town: crashes like […]

On Saturday, Islamist militants killed at least 29 students and one teacher in a state in northeast Nigeria. The terrorists set fire to a dormitory, burning many students alive, and shot survivors who attempted to escape.Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” has been blamed for the horrific attack. Presumably the goal in […]

It looks like the rot in Turkey’s AK Party runs deep—and perhaps even all the way to the top. An excellent analysis in the Turkey Analyst of how the Gezi Park protests have concretely set back Erdogan’s political program includes the following passage digging into the recent anti-Semitic drivel seeping out of the party leadership: Erdoğan’s […]

The Egyptian Revolution lurches on. With 42 dead in Cairo last night, and widespread unrest around the country, dreams of a “velvet coup” are evaporating. In the wake of last night’s violence, the Brotherhood is calling on Egyptians to “rise up” against the coup. American diplomacy, aimed now at reconciling the Brotherhood to the coup, […]

Buddhist-Muslim tensions are spreading beyond Burma. Early this morning, the Mahabodhi Temple, one of Eastern India’s holiest Buddhist shrines, was hit by a series of explosions, which officials believe were an act of terrorism. Although little else is known about the attack and no deaths have been reported, the NYT report suggests that these attacks are […]

The big news this week was the coup-that-wasn’t-a-coup in Egypt. We wrote about what this news might mean for US-Egypt relations and for the spread of democracy in an essay: It’s likely that the non-coup will lure some Egyptian money back into the country, but if violence continues and Islamist terrorists foment disorder and attack, […]

The American surveillance apparatus has come under more scrutiny than ever before in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. On Saturday, the New York Times expanded on this theme with a new piece arguing that the FISA courts, which review the constitutionality of the government’s data collection programs, have effectively become a “parallel Supreme Court” with little […]

In the modern era, great popes must know how to use the media effectively, and Francis so far seems to be mastering his trade. After a brief period out of the headlines, he re-emerged this week with some razzle-dazzle moves, using the unique powers of the papacy to communicate his message through a sometimes hostile […]