Fifty years ago (base 10), when I was a kid in the South, only the rich had air conditioning. Now two lawsuits are challenging the lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons: Only 21 of the 111 prisons overseen by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the state prison agency, are fully air-conditioned. Many of […]

News from and excerpts of Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s new book about the Afghanistan war are whipping around the web today. The book, released Tuesday but not yet read by Via Meadia, looks to be a sobering criticism of the way Team Obama has handled the war over the past three years.As the excerpts make clear, […]

It’s only about half over, but 2012 is already looking like a very bad year for the world economy. The measured optimism that many had going into the year has completely faded. The good signs at the end of last year turned out to be a short uptick rather than the beginning of a long-term […]

Hard to believe, but that’s what the decision handed down by the regional court in Cologne, Germany means: circumcising a child under the age of consent is a crime, notwithstanding the religious beliefs of the parents.Many judges who loyally served the Third Reich finished their careers in perfect peace and quiet after World War Two; […]

More signs of trouble in China. This time the news is that cash-strapped local governments are having to sell off the luxury cars assigned as perks to government officials. These cars are a badge of office throughout China’s vast bureaucracy, even in the middle ranks of government. Such perquisites have traditionally attracted considerable anger among […]

Our regular readers are well aware that the Arab Spring has been far messier and more problematic than breathless media reports would have had one believe. Now, months later, the BBC has issued a mea culpa on its own coverage. Reports the Daily Mail: The BBC’s coverage of the Arab Spring has been heavily criticised—by […]

President Rousseff isn’t taking Brazil’s economic deceleration lying down. Her administration is responding to slow growth with massive government investment in infrastructure. It is also continuing to push interest rates down by strong-arming the country’s two largest national banks. The good news is that Brazil needs infrastructure and investment, so many of these projects are […]

A case of forced abortion—not uncommon but here documented in rare detail—is breathing new life into the smoldering resentment of China’s one-child policy, the Economist reports: Even three years ago, Ms Feng’s suffering might have gone unnoticed outside the remote village in the north-western province of Shaanxi where she lives—just another statistic in China’s family-planning programme. But […]

The academic world has been in a tizzy over the (possibly soon to be reversed) ouster of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan by the Board of Visitors earlier this month. Much of the controversy has stemmed from the fact that the reasons for her ouster are less than clear; Sullivan was almost universally well-regarded […]

Although the Big Decision isn’t scheduled until Thursday, the Supreme Court may have already set the tone for the week by judging like Solomon. There was a decision for conservatives upholding Citizens United. There was a decision for liberals banning mandatory life in prison without parole for juvenile offenders. And there was a split decision […]