California’s “Hydrogen Highway” is a road to nowhere. About a decade ago, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for the state to invest more than $50 million in the program, which was to lead to the creation of 100 hydrogen fuel stations capable of serving 2,000 fuel-cell vehicles. Today, the state has a whopping total of nine […]

In March, we reported that the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), a program created to provide coverage to sick Americans who have been uninsured for at least six months, was in serious trouble. Only a fraction of the expected 400,000 people had signed up, but the program was burning through the cash allotted to the program […]

The President of the Philippines announced today that his country is embarking on an ambitious military upgrade to protect itself from “bullies”—namely, China.“In thinly veiled comments referring to China, [President Beningo] Aquino yesterday vowed in a speech marking the navy’s 115th anniversary that the armed forces would be given the resources necessary to protect Philippine […]

Two stories tell us that things in the Middle East may have just taken a dark and dangerous turn.First, Hezbollah fighters played a vital role in Butcher Assad’s assault on rebel-held Qusayr, a strategically positioned town in Syria. Dozens of Hezbollah men were reportedly killed in some of the heaviest fighting yet in the civil […]

As college grads increasingly cling to any jobs they can get, high school students are being pushed into the internship market for their first encounters with the world of work. The Chicago Tribune reports: “Part-time jobs have become scarcer and scarcer for high school students,” said Alison Cooper Chisolm, CEO of Massachusetts-based Ivey College Consulting […]

Meet Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey, the most expensive hospital in the country. In an analysis of Medicare data from 2001, the NYT found that Bayonne charged more per treatment than any other US hospital for almost a quarter of common procedures. The data is eye-popping: Bayonne Medical typically charged $99,689 for treating each case of […]

[Our hearts and prayers are with all those affected by the tornado in Oklahoma and their families. In light of this tragedy, here are some comments we made on the eve of Hurricane Sandy on natural disasters and our relationship to the higher powers around us. The disaster is different, but the message is just as pertinent […]

By now you’ve probably heard about Yahoo’s purchase of the social networking/publishing platform Tumblr for an eye-popping $1.1 billion, which made its founder David Karp about $265 million richer overnight.The 26 year old, whom Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer characterized as “one of the most perceptive, capable entrepreneurs I’ve worked with,” is cut from the same cloth as […]

Prime Minister Thein Sein of Myanmar yesterday became the first leader from his country to make an official visit to the United States in nearly fifty years. In talks in the Oval Office, Sein sought to assure the President Obama that his country would continue to move forward on political reforms; the President, for his […]

Have the Bush-era neocons and Obama liberals made all the same mistakes in the Middle East? David P. Goldman argues convincingly in Tablet that the past five years of Middle East policy have been marked not by a Democratic departure from the previous administration’s policies but by a complete failure by consensus: with regard to […]