The director of the nonpartistan Government Accountability Office, Lorelei St. James, has an unusual recommendation to Capitol Hill: Ditch the dollar bill.While it may be hard to imagine life without the trusty dollar, a switch from $1 bills to $1 coins would be a smart move in the long run, the WSJ reports: The GAO estimates that replacing $1 […]

During the brouhaha over George W. Bush’s nomination of John Bolton to serve as UN ambassador, I felt that the president ought to be represented by the person he had selected in the job. At Via Meadia we feel the same way in the debate over UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s possible promotion to be secretary […]

We don’t know yet for certain whether this is the result of fighting or whether Assad has finally hit some sort of kill switch for his country, but as of today, the Syrian Internet has gone down.Are these the desperation moves of a regime at the end of its rope or a technical problem? Is […]

Readers who know the songs of Tom Lehrer will understand what’s happening with the looming United Nations vote on non-member observer status for the Palestinian Authority.In his song “The Folk Song Army”, Lehrer writes about the Spanish Civil War. The lyrics go: Remember the war against Franco That’s the kind where each of us belongs; Though […]

Obama kept us out of the Syrian war, but now that the election is over, his administration is moving toward a deeper engagement. David Sanger and Eric Schmitt’s report in the New York Times this morning makes it unmistakably clear that Washington is considering far-reaching steps that could involve the United States much more profoundly in […]

China’s Global Times, a daily newspaper run by the Communist Party, put out an interesting piece this week. India and China “can rule waves together”, the piece declares. Is this a Chinese proposal for shared hegemony of Asia’s oceans? Or is China finally getting the message that alienating its neighbors might not be the best […]

Could we be seeing the end of routine doctor visits? Scientific American reports that researchers are testing a new system for electronic doctor visits that could potentially eliminate the need for patients to see a doctor for routine illnesses. Patients would simply enter their symptoms and health record into an online system, and doctors would […]

China’s brinkmanship over the South China Sea looks like it will be kicked up a notch in the New Year, reports the Sydney Morning Herald: From January 1, Hainan police will have the authority to board and seize control of foreign ships which “illegally enter” Chinese waters and order them to change course or stop […]

The latest round of climate talks in Doha began Tuesday in the usual fashion—with a spate of bickering and accusations between developing countries and the West. China and India led a group of 15–20 developing countries calling for their developed peers to reduce emissions (in particular, Annex 1, the group that took part in the […]

If American policymakers want to keep America out of a war with China in the Pacific, they should start by reading Thucydides’ account of the origins of the Peloponnesian War. At least that’s what the Diplomat’s James Holmes thinks as he advises policymakers on how to go about revising the defense agreements with Japan.Holmes notes that the Peloponnesian War […]