News that spending on health care has slowed down has been making the rounds over the past few weeks. This is a big deal, given our recent history with out of control health care costs, but the story within the story may be even more important: the reduced health care spending isn’t solely due to the […]

Officials and politicians in cash-strapped cities need to start being careful what they say. Two months after the SEC slapped Illinois with fraud charges for making misleading statements about its finances, it is doing the same to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has been fighting bankruptcy after racking up $350 million debts to fix an incinerator.The SEC is taking issue […]

The NYT published a news piece today on the Affordable Care Act that accuses Republicans of “preparing to exploit every problem that arises” with Obamacare in the next midterm elections. The most telling part of the piece comes at the end. After heaping scorn on Republican opportunism, the author delves into what Obama will need […]

North Korea moved two long-range missiles off the launchpad yesterday, a clear sign that the Norks will not go ahead with the rocket test that has kept the US, Japan, South Korea, and much of world media on edge over the past few weeks.Another piece of news is equally significant: the Bank of China stopped […]

The Pentagon directly accused China of various cyber crimes against the United States in its annual report released yesterday, a significant escalation from the administration’s previous policy of merely suggesting that much of the world’s cyber espionage originates in China. The New York Times has the details: While some recent estimates have more than 90 percent of […]

The last time we wrote about SolarCity, the company was under federal investigation for possibly grifting the government. Now the country’s largest installer of residential solar panels is suing the federal government for supposedly failing to cough up grant money promised in 2009. The Wall Street Journal reports: [C]ash grants created by the federal stimulus law…are based […]

The Obama administration hoped it could walk away from Iraq without consequences. Unfortunately, this has been far from the case. Nouri al-Maliki’s ever closer ties with Iran have pushed him to support Assad in Syria despite Assad’s earlier support for Sunni and Baathist insurgents in Iraq. At home, Maliki has stoked sectarianism by purging Sunnis […]

For all of its many benefits, full-time telework can be lonely. One study identified 2.5 days a week to be the telework sweet spot, after which the solitude becomes oppressive. For those who for whatever reason have to telework even more frequently than that, there’s now a new option—co-working: This was supposed to be the […]

Turkey and Israel are finally close to a reconciliation deal. Officials from both sides are meeting in Jerusalem to hammer out the details of Israeli compensation to the families of those killed in the Mavi Marmara clash of 2010, hoping to finally thaw relations between the once friendly and cooperative countries. The Times of Israel reports: The […]

There’s a prospect that the murky events surrounding the tragic death of Ambassador Stevens on September 11, 2012, in Libya are about to make a comeback as a major storyline. Three witnesses advertised as “whistleblowers” are set to appear in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week, and the Beltway media and its assorted […]