As regular readers of this site know, Via Meadia’s loyal interns help research and prepare the various posts that go up on the site. Normally as part of our policy of keeping the rising generation off-balance we kennel them in the dark on short rations when they aren’t actually writing for VM.Frequent Via Meadia contributor […]

So much for that diplomatic opening. North Korea, after briefly signaling flexibility on its nuclear program (again), is up to its old tricks. The Financial Times reports: South Korean and US officials fear North Korea could be preparing to detonate a nuclear bomb for the third time to coincide with the imminent launch of a […]

The political landscape is littered with the remains of short-lived protest parties, from the “know-nothings” of the 19th century to the Dixiecrats or Perotistas of the 20th. Generally, these parties emerge due to populist anger with the dominant, out-of-touch mainstream parties of the day. They burn bright for a few years, garnering headlines and enthusiastic […]

The Great Recession was supposed to be the end of the Anglo-American capitalist model which had dominated the world economy for more than a century. To hear the doomsayers from a few years back tell it, this competitive capitalist model was inherently unstable and prone to collapse; the recession was just the final nail in […]

It was a busy weekend at the stately Mead manor in glamorous Queens. Besides essays on President Obama’s campaign platform and the Iran essay that went up this morning, I was preparing an article for the Wall Street Journal that is running today. When I last checked, there was no paywall protection through this link […]

They will be biting their fingernails in Israel as the focus in the Iranian nuclear controversy shifts to bargaining now that, apparently, Iran has agreed to another round of talks on its nuclear program.On the one hand, Iran has a clear treaty right to develop and use nuclear technology for civilian energy purposes. On the […]

Does the end of the blue consensus mean that America is no longer able to serve as a model for the developing world as they modernize their economies and societies? Perhaps, one of this week’s essays argues, but America can still lead the world in figuring out what comes next—unless we give in to “the […]

There’s the story of the reporter who was showing off his deep religious knowledge in the newsroom. One of his colleagues asked him to explain the meaning of Easter. “That’s easy,” the reporter said. “Christians believe that Jesus comes out of his tomb on Easter — but if he sees his shadow he goes back […]

With Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, in the US for a state visit, the FT among others produced a ‘state of the relationship’ piece that captures some of the dynamics between the two largest (by population) democracies in the western hemisphere. Overall, things are decent but not deep.In the plus column is trade. The US is […]

Last week Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit) and I were at a panel discussion at the Baker Center at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. No cameras or tape recorders were there to preserve the event for posterity, but blogger Winston of Unapproved Thoughts was in the audience and has posted an account of the (on […]