We hope the strain of months of watching Greece dance on the edge of a financial cliff hasn’t distracted observers from the portentous developments here in Blue-town, USA.As the NYT reports, Jefferson County, Alabama, has been on the rocks since last summer, when it declared bankruptcy rather than face the $4 billion tsunami of debt […]

Renowned climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada and his colleague Neil Swart have published a study in Nature [subscription required] that concludes that Canada’s oil sands are not as harmful to the environment as previously imagined. The science, once again, is not settled.“Burning the proven reserve [of Alberta’s heavy bitumen] would lead to a warming […]

Over the past week, the climate blogosphere has been in a tizzy, first over a cache of leaked documents from the climate-skeptic Heartland Institute, then over the slow realization that at least one of these documents was probably faked. These documents, which purported to show that funding for Heartland’s climate programs were largely bankrolled by […]

The Obama Administration’s energy policy is looking more convoluted by the day. On the one hand, its controversial nixing of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried Canadian oil south to refineries in the United States, delighted his green base. On the other, the administration has also been behind plans to expand offshore drilling […]

A few days ago, Via Meadia wrote about the disparaging anti-Semitic (and homophobic) attacks against the main opposition candidate in the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election, Henrique Capriles Radonski (who, we noted, is actually a practicing Catholic with Jewish heritage). Since our post, Matthew Fishbane, a senior editor at Tablet, has called attention to the deep roots […]

Step aside, Dan Brown. Reality is catching up with your fiction. A series of high profile leaks has trickled out of the Vatican. The revelations, reported by the Wall Street Journal, range from the newsworthy to the bizarre: In a letter dated April 4, 2011, the archbishop [Carlo Maria Viganò] lamented “evident situations of corruption: […]

Late last week, Iran dropped hints that it is ready for talks with Western powers over its nuclear program and pending sanctions. Given the mullahs’ history, many observers (Via Meadia included), have reasons to doubt their sincerity. Today’s news justifies this skepticism. This morning, Iranian deputy chief of armed forces announced that Iran would take […]

This week marked the end of the most recent installment of the Economist’s online debate series. The motion was about social networking: “This house believes that society benefits when we share personal information online.” Jeff Jarvis, Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY presented an eloquent closing rebuttal to Andrew Keen, the technologist author […]

A ray of light may be breaking through the Eurogloom. The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.K. government deficit is smaller than expected. The Krugman catastrophe has not occurred despite the belt-tightening of the Cameron/Clegg coalition. Public sector net borrowing was negative in January—meaning a surplus—to the tune of £7.8 billion ($12.36 billion), the Office […]

h/t @Zerohedge:How many EU officials does it take to change a light bulb?None. There’s nothing wrong with the bulb; its condition is improving every day.The latest news from Europe: the new Greek package agreed last night will almost certainly fail — just like all the other bailouts agreed over the last two years.  A memo […]