For a week or so in early February religion was once again at the center of media attention (this time unrelated to the lingering issue of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism). Using powers given her by the “Obamacare” legislation, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human services, issued a regulation concerning the requirement that all employer-provided health […]

There’s really nothing wrong with existing U.S. drug policy, except that all but one of its underlying ideas is false. The one true idea is that drug use can be a dangerous activity for drug-takers and others, both because people under the spell of intoxication partially lose control of their behavior and because people under […]

America’s economic structure, the labor market and the American workplace have changed greatly in the last twenty years and will likely change even more in the twenty years to come. Some of these changes are unpredictable; others look baked into the cake. But as the blue social model continues to fade, the question of jobs […]

When U.S. and coalition forces ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in 1991, a new American era of military power projection began. During the Cold War, America’s military became an increasingly static force, forward based around the world to deter warfare, dampen regional security competitions and contain Soviet expansion. With the collapse of the Soviet […]

Not all the Democrats are celebrating the January unemployment numbers as morning in Obama’s America. Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary and one of Via Meadia’s favorite liberals, notes dourly that most of the hiring is happening in lower-wage sectors.With more Americans impoverished than at any other point over the past fifty years, Reich finds candidate […]

Earlier this week I was in Washington, teaching a class and attending some events connected to the visit of China’s vice president.  It was an instructive time; in meetings with U.S. officials, with experts who follow China closely, and at the “state lunch” when Vice President Xi was the guest of honor at a State […]

On February 5, 2012, the New York Times carried a story about a Confucian academy in South Korea. It is one of some 150 such academies (seawon) in the country. Their main program consists of retreats, especially for schoolchildren. The program, apparently quite rigorous, is to provide training in moral behavior and etiquette (the two […]

Last week, the New York Times carried a front-page story on Libya entitled “Libya Struggles to Curb Militias as Chaos Grows.” If the headline were not enough to clarify the main point, the subheads in the print edition were: “Government Paralyzed” and “Officials Confronted by Rivalries, Grievances and Old Habits.”To my knowledge, this is the […]

Not long ago, I was shown at a provincial university the quotas for admission that the faculty of economics had received from the ministry for this academic year, derived from the national admittance threshold points: “Students on basic training 750, students on the masters’ course 120,” and so on. I could hardly believe my eyes. […]

The embassy of Turkey is located at 2525 Massachusetts Avenue in the core of a region of Northwest DC known as Embassy Row. The compound’s bright and lively architecture stands in stark contrast to the gray block structures across the street, representing the Indian, Japanese, and South Korean embassies. The compound is accessed through a […]