As we mentioned yesterday, the visit to Gaza by the emir of Qatar signals the beginning of a new era in Palestinian politics. The emir promised $400 million in reconstruction projects for the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, while Fatah—the old guard of Palestinian politics—is slipping into irrelevancy.Once upon a time, the secular-leaning Fatah led the Palestinian […]

Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of […]

In St. Petersburg, police are cracking down more than usual. New noise restrictions make “yelping”, “moaning”, and “stomping” illegal after 11 p.m. This year the city also banned lesbian and gay “propaganda” and shut down some theater performances deemed inappropriate.Measures like this echo a shift around the country, where all sorts of officials have been jumping […]

Sunni radicalism is on the rise in Pakistan, and the violence perpetrated against the hated Shiite minority has been particularly brutal. Reuters has a sobering piece outlining the extent of the recent violence, which identifies the Sunni terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi as one of the worst culprits: “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the detonator of terrorism in Pakistan,” said Karachi […]

More bad news for weary European bureaucrats: The last best hope of the faltering Eurozone, Germany’s mighty manufacturing engine, appears to be hitting a slump. Reuters: Activity in Germany’s manufacturing and service sectors declined for a sixth straight month in October as order books thinned, indicating Europe’s largest economy had clearly stagnated in the second […]

A new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that a tenure controversy is brewing in the Methodist Church, which is looking to keep enrollment high by recruiting high-quality pastors. Unfortunately, they are butting up against opposition that will sound familiar to anyone who has been following the debate over teacher tenure: Church leaders say that […]

So not only is the U.S. about to take the global lead in oil production; a new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that the glut of cheap gas, which is difficult and expensive to transport abroad, has made America one of the cheapest places to manufacture many energy-intensive materials. This is particularly true in […]

The U.S. is about to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer: Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the fourth straight year […]

And you thought the Global War on Terror was over. The Washington Post reports: Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.” The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources […]

It’s no secret by now that the cost of a higher education has been rising for some time now. But these reports often fail to take into account the myriad of loans, financial aid programs, and tax credits that reduce or delay the cost for many students. Over the past ten years, the amount that […]