Eight former DEA chiefs want President Obama to keep a lid on pot. In a joint statement released on Tuesday, they urged Obama to have his administration sue Colorado and Washington over their new marijuana legalization laws: One of the former DEA administrators, Peter Bensinger, told the AP that the more time goes by, the […]

The war in Syria just strayed into Iraq.Forty-eight Syrian soldiers were killed yesterday inside Iraq, in a well-coordinated ambush by gunmen whose identities remain unknown. Numerous reports say the soldiers were unarmed and many of them were wounded. They apparently crossed into Iraq near Yaarubiyeh to escape heavy fighting in northern Syria and were being […]

Student debt soared to nearly $1 trillion at the end of 2012, but young Americans now have the lowest levels of total debt that they have had for 15 years, according to the WSJ: A typical young U.S. household—defined as one led by someone under age 35—had $15,000 in total debt in 2010, down from […]

WRM has an op-ed in the WSJ on how al-Qaeda remains a serious threat to the US even after its failures in Iraq and the death of bin Laden: At this stage, the terrain favors America’s enemies. In places like the wide swath of Africa’s Sahel region, and in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, it is […]

Decades of incompetence and corruption in Detroit have led the city to the brink of the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history—yet the private sector is booming. Some might attribute this discrepancy to poor management on the part of the city government, but a recent piece in the NYT takes a different approach, bemoaning the plight of […]

Over at the New York Times, Erik Olsen reports on a new visual amplification process with lots of applications, including checking premature babies’ pulses without touching them: A 30-second video of a newborn baby shows the infant silently snoozing in its crib, his breathing barely perceptible. But when the video is run through an algorithm that […]

Catching up on some stuff I don’t want to slip by:The most important news of the past few days is arguably contained in a somewhat-buried article in the New York Times by Robert F. Worth and C.J. Chiver, entitled “Seized Chinese Weapons Raise Concerns on Iran.”  The subtitle gives a hint of one of the […]

There is a rare gem in Sunday’s New York Times in the business section.  Former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Christina Romer, has provided a balanced honest, accurate and concise summary of the arguments concerning the minimum wage. Given that a significant rise in the minimum wage was one of President Obama’s main […]

Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lived up to its name on Sunday when nearly 5,000 party members unanimously voted to pave the way for key reforms to the country’s sluggish state-run energy industry. The FT reports: Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) members convened for their national assembly agreed on Sunday to open the possibility of […]

Yesterday, Vice President Biden essentially threatened war with Iran. The US goal is “to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, period, end of discussion. Prevent, not contain, prevent!” Biden snapped to resounding applause. “The President of the United States cannot, and does not, bluff. President Barack Obama is not bluffing,” he said.Biden’s speech at the annual AIPAC conference in […]