The online education train keeps picking up steam. It was announced in May that Harvard had partnered with MIT to form a consortium called edX. Now comes word from the New York Times that the University of California, Berkeley, has jumped on board: Berkeley will be offering two courses, contributing new open-source technology and heading […]

In 2005, Riyadh recalled Bandar bin Sultan, who was for 22 years the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Now it appears that bin Sultan is back in business, this time as head of intelligence for the Kingdom. At the Weekly Standard, Elliot Abrams gives us a profile of this larger-than-life figure: Bandar is no bureaucrat; he […]

Not content with the high-speed rail pipe dream, California Governor Jerry Brown is pushing another multi-billion dollar infrastructure project under the “environmentally friendly” banner. In its way, it’s an ingenious solution to some perennial California problems, but at the end of the day it reveals that the imaginations of many California politicians are firmly stuck […]

China announced this week it would station troops on Yongxing Island, a one-square-mile islet in the Paracel Islands (see map). It’s a simple show of muscle, say analysts. “Putting garrisons on Woody Island [as Yongxing Island is known outside China] or elsewhere in the Paracels would effectively maroon these guys, so the only advantage would be […]

If there’s one thing the Chinese government fears more than an uncontrollable economic slowdown, it’s that the vast middle class will demand to have their voices heard—all 300 million of them. And just to make things more interesting, there’s a good chance that a slowdown will accelerate the middle class demand for control over their […]

Something very strange is happening around the country: students are disappearing from America’s public schools.The New York Times reports that many of the country’s largest school districts are rapidly losing students as parents lucky enough to have the choice switch their kids to private and charter schools. In the country’s largest school districts, public school enrollment […]

Jane Perlez of the New York Times has a good piece on the gathering storm in the South China Sea. Perlez is one of the best foreign correspondents at the Times, and her coverage of the region is usually well ahead of that of her peers. Her latest effort references a grim report by the International Crisis […]

“More fun than a goat,” is how one of TR’s friends described watching him angle for the Republican Vice Presidential nomination in 1900 without actually admitting he wanted it; the phrase comes to mind as we watch Congressional Democrats trying to keep the heat on about Governor Romney’s tax returns while keeping their own firmly […]

Last year, the humanitarian community realized their lofty dreams for South Sudan: self-determination and independence. But unfortunately their dreams didn’t do anything to solve the problems holding back Africa’s newest splinter state. From the WSJ: The oil shutdown has hammered the Sudanese pound, now trading at about six to the dollar, compared with 3.55 before […]

The Romney camp is hurriedly trying to distance the GOP candidate from remarks made by an unnamed ‘adviser’ to a British newspaper on Tuesday that touted Romney’s “Anglo-Saxon heritage” and suggested that President Obama’s administration “didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we [the U.K. and the U.S.] have.”This is about as stupid a remark as […]