Republicans on the Hill seem to be shifting the shutdown fight away from Obamacare, but one possible ACA-related compromise continues to get play in the media: the repeal of the medical device tax. It’s a part of the law we haven’t written about much here at Via Meadia, because it’s not something the ACA stands or falls […]

While we’re still waiting for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to announce the Peace Prize tomorrow, people everywhere—including a choked up Jon Stewart—are rooting for Malala Yousufzai, a 16 year old from the mountains of Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education.People are rooting for her everywhere, that is, except Pakistan.There the […]

By 2020 China will be capable of invading Taiwan regardless of any foreign interference, according to an alarming report by Taiwan’s defense ministry. This marks the first time such a report has been commissioned, suggesting that Taiwan, which relies on the US for much of its defense, is feeling pressure from its cross-strait rival. The WSJ […]

MOOCs may have gotten their start in America, but China is increasingly the new frontier. In the past week alone, Coursera and EdX, two of America’s largest MOOC purveyors, have announced that they are expanding their operations to include partnerships with Chinese Universities: On Thursday, edX announced it’s partnering with 10 Chinese universities to launch […]

Low budget, independent Christian movie producers are angling to move from the DVD-only doldrums to the big screen. This has been an uphill struggle ever since the blockbuster success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, according to this report in the WSJ. Religion-themed books do well in the marketplace. What accounts for the failure, aside from outliers like […]

We have the power to feed Africa’s hungry children—namely, the technology to genetically modify crops to be resistant to drought and pestilence. Study after study has shown that these GMOs are safe to eat, but the green movement continues to oppose these famine-solving technologies. Given the lack of solid evidence to support this opposition, we have […]

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has a plan to rescue Venezuela from “corruption” and “economic sabotage”: all he needs is the legislature to grant him the power to rule by decree. The BBC reports: In a three-hour speech to the assembly, Mr Maduro called it a “matter of life or death” for the country’s socialist revolution.“If […]

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was released on bail on Wednesday, but was then promptly rearrested. NYT: Mr. Musharraf, 70, has been under house arrest at his villa outside Islamabad since April, facing criminal charges in three cases related to his nine years in power, from 1999 to 2008. The prospect of a former army […]

Detroit may have hit rock bottom, but things are about to get much worse for the city’s wildly corrupt former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. This week, Kilpatrick will be sentenced for convictions on 24 counts of extortion, racketeering and bribery. He could be facing as much as 28 years in prison, which would make it one […]

More bad news from the Libyan Afterparty. The Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan, was briefly kidnapped earlier today—apparently, the NYT reports, because of his cooperation with the US in tracking down the perpetrators of the attack on our diplomats in Benghazi.The Libyan intervention was a thoughtlessly conceived, poorly executed, casually thrown together operation approved by careless […]