I recently warned readers that giant, poison mohawk-sporting rats from Africa could be joining the throngs of New York rats happily frisking in Manhattan’s hip Tompkins Square Park.It turns out that reality has outrun speculation.  Three foot long Gambian pouched rats have already established themselves in Brooklyn where residents of a city housing project say […]

Two recent pieces in the Washington Post provide a startling look into the decrepit state of one of the grandest of the blue model dinosaurs still walking the earth – the Postal Service. The first explains the USPS’ best plan to cut its costs by $1.5 billion a year: laming the snail — slowing down […]

In perhaps the least exciting news story of the day, Kim Jong-il travels to Russia to meet President Medvedev, shakes hands, says hello, and otherwise gets little done. As the FT reports: [North Korea] want[s] to show they have countries to talk to and that they are realistic…Russia announced it would work with Pyongyang on […]

What do you call three bishops appointed to their posts by the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association? Excommunicated – that’s the Vatican’s answer to Beijing’s appointment of three bishops this year. China’s latest response is a crackdown on Chinese Catholics. Associated Press reports: A number of priests and laymen in China’s underground Catholic church have been […]

In a review of Ellis Cose’s The End of Anger: A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage, The New Republic’s John McWhorter discusses an interesting (though not entirely surprising) finding: young, affluent and well educated Blacks in particular are now much less likely to see pervasive racism as an inhibiting factor to their success: […]

Former senior director for the Middle East at the U.S. National Security Council Michael Doran, writing at Foreign Policy, offers a clear-headed recommendation to the White House on Middle East policy: block out the noise and focus on grand strategy. Today, naturally, the urgent questions U.S. senior leaders are asking include: How can the United […]

From Business Week: New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says state and local governments will have to come up with more money for their workers’ pensions in the next fiscal year to offset losses in the stock market.The average contribution rate to the state pension fund for public workers will rise from 16.3 percent of […]

By cracking down on the for-profit college industry, ostensibly to protect students from shoddy degree programs, the Obama administration has made it virtually impossible for small colleges to offer online programs. An article in Minding the Campus explains how the Department of Education “issued a regulation last October requiring institutions offering Internet classes to seek […]

Don’t anyone tell Nancy Pelosi, but Spain’s socialist government and opposition are embracing constitutional limits on public sector borrowing and enforced balanced budgets. It’s a man bites blue dog story: European socialists and social market conservatives are embracing radical fiscal ideas that the Tea Party loves and American liberals hate.Spain isn’t acting alone. Nicolas Sarkozy […]

Fearful of soaring prices, China will not relax strict measures put in place a year ago to restrict its growing housing bubble. As the FT reports: With the real estate market looking bubbly early last year, the government introduced a series of policies to rein in prices, from higher mortgage rates to restrictions on the […]