Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s India trip is real news.  She is now openly asking India to join the US in shaping the future of Asia and the Pacific.“India’s leadership has the potential to positively shape the future of the Asia-Pacific,” the AP reported Clinton saying. “We think that America and India share a fundamentally […]

“The SAT doesn’t matter on your applications,” say colleges like Bowdoin and Wake Forest, and they don’t require students to send those scores in with their applications.This sounds very liberal and forward-looking, but it turns out that both these schools, plus others, buy those test results from the College Board. The highest scoring high school […]

How can America manage crime in the post-Blue era?New America Foundation fellow and blogger Reihan Salam draws attention to a report on a new and effective approach to urban crime reduction: non-profit organizations of local businesses focused on providing public goods to their neighborhoods.By hiring private security forces, these so-called Business Improvement Districts have lowered […]

“We have made it clear to the Pakistani government that confronting violent extremists of all sorts is in its interest.” So said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton today in…India.A few people in Pakistan might disagree.Sec. Clinton is in India this week both to strengthen the American relations with the (possibly) rising superpower and to encourage […]

Washington DC has been a majority Black city for 51 years, with Blacks accounting for 71 percent of the city’s population at their peak.  In recent years, Blacks have moved out as whites moved in; according to the New York Times sometime early this year the Black share tipped below fifty percent.Washington has had its […]

In response to readers’ requests, Via Meadia short posts now have comments enabled. Everyone is welcome to join the discussion but please observe the rules.For other insights, reactions, or recommendations, always feel free to email us at ViaMeadia@the-american-interest.com.If you look at the blog roll, you can see that it, too, has been updated.  The blog […]

It’s winter down under but environmental politics are hot.  Leaders of the state of West Australia are threatening to secede from the country after Prime Minister Julia Gillard released plans for a new carbon tax next year, according to The Atlantic. Even in environmentally-conscious Australia, where 81 percent of voters support action to combat global […]

According to the NYT, they are.  The most likely outcome in Egypt is stagnation: they will tweak the system but Egypt’s economic and social performance will not change much overall.  Second most likely outcome?  Economic and social problems escalate with the ultimate victory of a more authoritarian and perhaps more Islamist regime.  Least likely outcome: […]

With the cost of borrowing in Spain and Italy rising to new highs today, Europe’s leaders are resolutely focused on the irrelevant.  The EU Summit planned for Thursday will focus on problems in Greece; Italy and Spain aren’t on the agenda.European fecklessness has been a major factor in this crisis: too little, too late could […]

Americans moaning about our endless debt debates should look over the ocean; compared to the EU, the US is a model of efficient transparency.The latest round of European bank stress tests — set up because the first round was so obviously a shady PR exercise intended to make bad banks look good — has flopped.  […]