The ballots are in, and City Councilman Eric Garcetti has won the Los Angeles mayoral election. The race was notable for a lack of differences between between the candidates, low public enthusiasm, and dismal voter turnout, which barely cracked 20 percent. What’s most interesting about the race was the role of unions. Garcetti’s opponent, City […]

Yesterday’s Washington Post carried a very scary front-page article, and no, I am not referring to the coverage of the Oklahoma twister. I refer to the article above the fold, left, signed by Scott Wilson and Karen deYoung entitled “Petraeus at heart of Benghazi Dispute.” The article supplies much more detail about the origins of […]

The American people are not dupes. Regarding the scandals, they’re showing a level of sense and good judgment that frequently escapes the denizens of the “Acela cocoon.”A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that more than half of Americans believe the Obama administration is covering up over Benghazi, and that a narrow plurality also thinks the […]

A cabal of rich corporate donors is funding and in some cases calling the shots at the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP). Ken Silverstein and The Nation get big points for sticking to principles for this great investigative report on the center’s ominously bland-sounding “Business Alliance.” Here’s a small taste of what they found: Last […]

Westerners have been saying for a while now that what the Islamic world needs is its equivalent of the Reformation. “Where is Islam’s Martin Luther?” they ask anxiously as they watch radicals rise from the wreckage of the Arab Spring and make good showings in Pakistan’s recent elections.In fact we have been witnessing the fruits […]

Europe’s stratospheric energy prices and economic doldrums are forcing a basic rethink of energy policies. The FT reports: [There is] a growing fear in Europe that rising energy prices now pose a threat to the industrial competitiveness of a region mired in recession. It has been driven home by a steady stream of announcements from European manufacturers about plans to […]

…is coming from the distinegrating reputations of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, commentators who at one time were taken seriously by some serious people, but whose most recent book will find a comfortable home on the shelves next to the finest works of regime apologists and hacks. “It often seems in these pages that Flynt […]

Two popular start-up companies that save people money and make their lives easier, Airbnb and Uber, are headed for the chopping block in two of America’s biggest cities.Airbnb is a popular website that cuts down on hotel costs by matching travelers with people offering to rent out space in their home or apartment; it now […]

Miami’s Mt. Sinai Medical Center has just promised to publicly release the rates at which insurance companies reimburse the hospital for treatments. In any other industry, it would be routine for a vendor to disclose prices to customers. But the regular rules don’t apply in health care, where hospitals typically keep the prices they charge for their services […]

 With the IRS and AP scandals picking up steam, Benghazigate seems to have become a little neglected of late, getting sustained attention only outside the MSM in the right-wing blogosphere. A good bit of reporting by Eli Lake of the Daily Beast on the interagency fight between the State Department and CIA shows, however, that this scandal still […]