It appears that a K Street of sorts is being paved in Brussels as American law firms and lobbyists have discovered that there’s real money to be made by influencing the EU’s decision-making process. The NYT story tells this as a classically boring progressive morality tale: evil special interests groups infiltrate noble government bureaucracy. The firms are taking advantage of […]

Saudi Arabia, frustrated with how things have been going in Middle East, is showing its displeasure by foregoing its seat on the UN Security Council. The FT: Announcing the decision on Friday, Riyadh said the global body had failed to protect the Syrian people or to resolve the Palestinian issue.“It is unfortunate that all the international efforts […]

Regular readers of VM know that our blogs, from conception to completion, are framed by the interests and convictions of WRM. They also know that we keep a few researchers and writers locked in the basement to make sure WRM’s line gets out daily.Yet somehow, contributor Andrew Lewis was able to escape long enough to concern himself with […]

Airbnb—the popular service that allows people to rent out their apartments or houses to guests in need of cheap lodging—has recently been fighting battles throughout the country with cities that want a slice of the pie. In particular, city officials want those renting out their spaces through Airbnb to pay the hotel tax on the […]

They are called the Sepah, and some say their influence is getting out of control. Iran’s central government is under pressure from domestic critics and international backers to rein in the influence of the Sepah—the 120,000-strong Revolutionary Guard corps sworn to protect Iran’s theological regime—to make it clear that the country is not run by military men. […]

Japan’s conflicted view of its own history was again on display today when the internal affairs minister and more than one hundred other lawmakers visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The shrine, where the souls of Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals, are interred, is seen by Japan’s neighbors as a monument to […]

“Publish or perish” is the familiar exhortation to academics seeking tenure, but maybe “publish rubbish or perish” is more apt. A good number of the articles published in humanities journals are more like vanity projects than substantive contributions to a discipline. According to a recent article in The Economist, rubbish now is piling up in scientific […]

The man who may pave the way for solving America’s pension crisis is a Democratic mayor from California. San Jose’s Chuck Reed is mounting a campaign to roll back a ludicrous legal precedent, set by the California Supreme Court, which maintains that state and local pensions constitute a contract between worker and employer that cannot […]

The restive Spanish region of Catalonia has just taken its boldest step yet toward independence from Spain. Earlier this week, Catalan officials released a massive grievance statement, culminating with an estimation that the Spanish government owes it nearly 10 billion euros. Essentially, the region argues that as one of the wealthiest parts of the country […]

Police departments across Europe are putting down deposits on 3D printers to manufacture guns—not for their own use, but to test out whether a 3D-printed firearm could actually pose a threat to public safety. The jury is still out, but signs point to yes: After testing a gun made from blueprints found on the internet, […]