This week’s episode on the US-China squabble channel is about pollution. The American embassy in Beijing has been tweeting hourly pollution levels from a device installed on its roof for about three years, something the Chinese have never been comfortable with. This week the Chinese officially demanded that foreign embassies cease broadcasting independent assessments of […]

The $125 billion Spanish bank bailout announced this weekend is more of the same: another temporary dose of pain meds that (we hope) prevents a market meltdown for a while but does not address the underlying conditions.Fair enough, in a way; Via Meadia has no desire to see a full blown European financial panic and […]

Turkey’s increasing presence and clout in its neighborhood is expanding further abroad to east Africa. The Christian Science Monitor reports: At the conference [on Somalia, held in Istanbul], Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized other nations for lacking Turkey’s on-the-ground presence in Somalia.“Without living there you cannot devise the correct policies and you cannot help. […]

New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo has been one of the Democratic Party’s most visible fighters in the struggle against the entrenched interests of the blue social model. As the NY Times reports, he is taking on the public sector unions, and some of his most important allies are private sector unions.The Committee to Save New […]

In one of the most significant cultural finds from Elizabethan England, British archeologists have uncovered the remains of the Curtain Theater in a back alley behind a London pub. Though groundlings may not know its significance compared to the world famous Globe Theater, the Curtain was one of the first stages to showcase the work […]

A couple of weeks ago we ran a post referring to a story by the Washington Post‘s higher education reporter, Anya Kamenetz, who detailed the five worst mistakes she made as a new college grad.We also took the unusual step of soliciting reader comments – we wanted to know what advice our faithful readership would give […]

In a country where unscrupulous union bosses have colluded with cowardly politicians to promise — but not to fund — high pensions to public employees for year after year, Illinois stands out.Specifically, the Illinois Teachers Retirement Fund is one of the country’s worst funded pension funds. According to accountants — who use softer methods to […]

There’s a lot of noise coming out of Syria and the various international chat-fests being organized around it these days. Stern warnings from the State Department, charges and counter charges of massacres and atrocities on the ground in Syria, soothing platitudes from Kofi Anan, diplomatic warnings from Russia: most of it can be summarized as […]

Hell hath no fury like the anger of a tenured professor whose discipline is under attack.In a move that has sent the nation’s academic establishment into an uproar, the House of Representatives recently passed an amendment that prevents the National Science Foundation from funding political science research.As expected, the forces of American political science have […]

The U.S. News and World report has an interesting look at Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin: According to Crossroads Generation, a group dedicated to reaching young people with the messages promoting individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise, in the recall election Walker carried the vote of those under the age of 25.“According to exit polling,” […]