This week we continued our series on the failures of the Bush Administration and looked at where the Republican Party needs to go in the years ahead: American political parties are constantly reinventing themselves. Bill Clinton ran as the un-Carter and un-Dukakis. President Obama ran as the un-Clinton. In 1968 Richard Nixon ran as the […]

Slate columnist Matt Yglesias has harsh criticism for districting in public school systems. In most American cities, children can only attend the schools in their district, which Yglesias argues effectively turns these ostensibly public schools into the “private property of local homeowners.” As he sees it, this is a root cause of much of the inequality between high-performing […]

It’s been six months since Hurricane Sandy ravaged much of the East Coast, but the rebuilding process is far from complete. True, much of the more obvious damage has been fixed and the trains in downtown Manhattan are running again, but further from the public eye, tens of thousands are still homeless despite months of cleanup. […]

Chalk up another interest group that might back immigration reform: homeowners. Immigrants are buying up American homes, potentially saving the housing sector and providing a boost to the US economy. The Financial Times reports: Although they represent close to 13 per cent of the US population, immigrants accounted for nearly 36 per cent of growth in home […]

The gun control defeat has been analyzed to death, but there still might be a thing or two it can teach us about American politics more generally. That’s the thesis of an insightful piece by Ross Douthat on the growing support on the right and the left for libertarian policies. He writes: The resistance to […]

As nearly half of young American college grads work in jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree while struggling to pay off crushing student debt, lawmakers and educators are beginning to ask a critical question: What is college for?The answer isn’t obvious. Until recently, much weight has been given to the intellectual value of a […]

The EU is taking a hard look at Hezbollah. After Bulgaria pointed the finger at Hezbollah operatives for a deadly attack on a bus carrying Jewish tourists, after a Cyprus court convicted a Hezbollah agent of surveilling potential targets for terrorist attacks, and amid increasing reports of Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime in Syria—it […]

Slip on your gloves and pin on your tiara. The Washington Post reports on the growth of “professional princesses” who lead parties for girls across the country: Amid thousands of princess products and millions of begowned little girls, it turns out there is a decent living to be made by chipper-voiced entrepreneurs ready to displace the old […]

I am told that tickets are still available for the third and last performance of the Ring cycle at the Metropolitan Opera this spring. For anyone who cares about music or wants to see one of the greatest creations of the human spirit brilliantly realized, this is an opportunity not to be missed.As the curtain […]

There are now six million unemployed in Spain, the highest level of unemployment since the country first started keeping records. The FT reports that France also posted record joblessness numbers, with unemployment rates breaking the previous 1997 high. What will the long-term effects of these staggering totals be? The fear voiced by many analysts is […]