Despite all the big talk in the Kremlin about revived Russian demographics, the reality seems clear: Russia’s Slavic, Orthodox population is shrinking, and its Muslim populations are growing rapidly. This demographic change is unsettling everywhere, nowhere perhaps more so than in and around the Caucasus where historically Islamic ethnic groups from the mountains are gradually […]

Bank runs in Europe? The EU made them a little bit more likely this weekend, and as Cypriots stampede for the shrinking number of ATMs still handing out cash on the island, Italians, Greeks and Spaniards are also beginning to wonder if, with interest rates effectively at zero and confused politicians running Europe’s bank systems, […]

This spring, if everything goes according to plan, Pakistan’s government will reach a remarkable milestone. Led by the Pakistan People’s Party, which is horribly corrupt and deeply unpopular, the government will become the first civilian administration to pass the reins of government to another civilian administration in Pakistan’s history.That is, if the army can be kept in […]

Greens need to put away their counterproductive symbolic politics, and focus instead on developing realistic alternatives to fossil fuel. So argues Bjørn Lomborg in a recent piece on Project Syndicate. Lomborg is a Danish academic and renegade environmentalist who has been a thorn in the side of the green movement for a long time. His book The Skeptical Environmentalist raised the […]

Cheap, clean water may soon be available for the whole planet. According to Reuters, defense contractor Lockheed Martin has developed a filter that will hugely reduce the amount of energy necessary to turn sea water into fresh water. The filter, which is five hundred times thinner then others currently available, lets water pass through but blocks all […]

A national implosion is coming, one which will take down the American public school system in its current form. So argues Glenn Reynolds, a well known law professor and the creator of the blog Instapundit, in his new book The K-12 Implosion. That the lower education system has problems is no secret, but for those who […]

Something astonishing is happening in blue California: actual forward-looking policy innovation.A recent NYT article reports on a new bill before the State Senate that would require public universities to give credit for online courses. The goal is to make it easier for students who can’t get into oversubscribed introductory classes to still get credit for […]

Iran is doing a lot more to control events in Syria than Washington, it appears. In a statement that reinforces observations by other officials in other countries, the head of military intelligence in the Israel Defense Forces claims Iran and Hezbollah have raised a formidable army to assist Butcher Assad, and to protect Iranian interests […]

Michigan made it official this week: Detroit can no longer survive without adult supervision. Michigan’s governor named Kevyn Orr, a DC bankruptcy lawyer, to handle the city’s affairs on an emergency basis as the deep blue city makes a last ditch effort to avoid the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history.During the long grim slide, […]

Could Obamacare self-destruct? We’ve previously written about the possibility that companies would respond to the Affordable Care Act by self-insuring, using a form of coverage called stop-loss insurance to take direct responsibility for their employees’ health care costs. This scheme lets companies escape the new taxes that Obamacare imposes, as well as giving them more flexibility […]