Yesterday we noted the distressing anti-immigrant policies in Greece that have led to violent treatment of foreigners. We’ve also noted how another stressed EU member – Hungary – has gone even further down the road of xenophobic extremism (see here, here, and here).But even by Hungarian standards things are getting ugly. The odious Zsolt Bayer, […]

The kids were getting rambunctious, so the grownups had to step in.They did, and the trillion dollar coin is dead. As Ezra Klein reports, the Treasury won’t make one and if it did the Fed wouldn’t accept it.The grownups understand what the kids don’t; money is serious business and playing silly mind games with the […]

It sounds like the basis for a James Bond movie: After a six years, forensic investigators puzzling over “anonymous” rifle cartridges in Africa have finally found the source of the munitions—Iran. C.J. Chivers has the story in the New York Times: Iran has a well-developed military manufacturing sector, but has not exported its weapons in quantities rivaling […]

Medical experts were shocked earlier this week when a new RAND study on electronic medical records found that the new technology has been much less successful in reducing health care costs than everyone originally predicted. But the RAND data tells part of the story, as another recent study published in the journal Health Affairs shows: […]

Blogger Doug Mataconis points to some statistics indicating that residents of Washington DC may watch more porn films on the internet than residents of any US state. Some social conservatives will view this with alarm, saying it is one more sign that America is turning into Sodom and the day of wrath is coming. Others […]

With the fiscal cliff fading into the past, attention is now turning to the next DC-generated crisis: the debt ceiling. This dispatch from left-leaning Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent on his  Plum Line blog suggests that the search for a Democrats-only solution to raise the ceiling in the Senate may be tough, and reading between the […]

Could Iran finally be ready for serious talks on its uranium enrichment program? A recent announcement by its lead nuclear negotiator indicates that it might be. But as always with Iran, words and actions aren’t necessarily aligned and Russia is worried that the Iranians aren’t ready to move.Laura Rozen reports at the Back Channel: Western diplomats fear […]

We’re big fans of our colleague Peter Berger’s blog here at Via Meadia. His takes on religious issues of the day are always worth reading. His latest observation: The religiously unaffiliated in America supposedly make up as much as 20 percent of the population according to recent surveys. Yet at times of tragedy, the atheist/humanist […]

In recent days we’ve been hearing a lot of hysterical chatter, from the NYT, the National Geographic, and other media outlets—about how 2012 was the hottest year ever for the continental United States. Obviously, this is evidence that global warming will soon destroy us all: Scientists said that natural variability almost certainly played a role in last year’s […]

[UPDATE] France is at war in Mali, launching air strikes against jihadi forces threatening the country’s fragile (and not very impressive) government. Given the sharp limits on France’s ability to project power, French officials are in discussions with the Pentagon about possible American intelligence and logistics support.The conflict in Mali is France’s third military intervention […]