Arriving in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, on Thursday morning, Samantha Powers offered “a blunt and simple” message: “the US is watching.” Her presence there probably doesn’t mean much to the citizens of a country reeling from violent revolution, counter-revolution, and brutal attacks by machete-wielding militias; CAR leaders have been calling for increased international attention to the conflict for weeks now, with little effect. Powers’ trip, the New York Times reports, raises the question: “What, exactly, is the United States willing to do to stop Christians and Muslims here from killing one another, and how much is it willing to spend?” The answer, it seems, is “not much.”

Months of furor over the NSA’s surveillance program have come to a head: a panel of advisors appointed by President Obama to make recommendations on reforming the NSA have released their report. We don’t necessarily endorse all the details of how that balance is struck here, but it looks like the authors of the report got the broad principles right. What’s needed, in both the NSA specifically and digital privacy more generally, is “ordered liberty” that reflects the ordered liberty we apply to the rest of American life.

The US economy may soon be able to take off the training wheels. When investors celebrated rather than mourned the Fed’s first, tentative step to cut its Quantitative Easing program, it was a sign that investors think growing strength can offset the impact of reduced Federal Reserve bond purchases. This is not only a good sign for the US, but a good sign for the world.

The life of Thomas More, as cast in literary amber in both Britain and America, has remarkable appeal to diverse audiences with incommensurate passions.

The first full-length biography of Jim Henson is not all that it could be, but fosters new appreciation for an American creative genius.

Professor William E. Dodd, FDR’s envoy to Germany from 1933 to 1937, got curiously lost in the postwar historical shuffle, despite his early warnings about rising evil in Hitler’s Berlin. His story is newly relevant, and three very different books, read together, explain why.

An untenable assertion sets the stage for a trend-spotter’s insights.

Setting up an American-style university in Vietnam has got to be easier than winning a war, doesn’t it?

The U.S. government’s Plan Colombia worked almost despite itself.

Somalia’s informal banking system is one of the only coherent institutions in the country—so why is U.S. policy undermining it?