Iranian blogger and online dissident Sattar Beheshti has just died in prison, likely after being tortured by Iranian authorities. He is but the latest casualty of Tehran’s crackdown on free press and political activism.Beheshti’s death has brought Iran unwanted attention, including condemnation from the U.S. State Department, which termed the death “suspicious” and called for […]

Even among California cities that have declared bankruptcy, San Bernardino stands out as extraordinary in its own right: Its city officials had been lying about the city’s fiscal condition for nearly 20 years.A new Reuters piece explains how the city continued to raise wages and benefits for public employees long after it became clear that these moves […]

The 113-meter-long ARA Libertad, “the pride of Argentina’s navy,” is still being held in a Ghana port by the Ghanian police on behalf of an American hedge fund that says it is owed $1.6 billion by the Argentinian government. Last Wednesday, when Ghanian port workers tried to move the boat with a crane, the Argentinian […]

Last week’s dispute between Brussels and the IMF over the Greek bailout is getting worse. Less than a week away from an important Greek debt payment, both parties have been forced to postpone an agreement on another Greek bailout due to their inability to agree on a debt target or timetable for Greece.The disagreement came to the […]

WSJ: “The 22-member Arab League acknowledged the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the legal representative and main interlocutor for Syria’s opposition.” The Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-member group of Sunni Gulf countries, quickly followed suit.So the new Syrian opposition council, the government in waiting, if you like, was immediately recognized by Arab countries as […]

The results are in from the 2012 presidential election and the winner is… not money. We’ve certainly heard ample warnings, especially from Democrats, about the all-powerful torrent of money that was going to buy the 2012 elections as a result of the Citizens United ruling. But as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads SuperPAC, and his affiliated […]

Thomas Jefferson based his hope for the new American Republic on “the common sense and good judgment of the American people.” This faith had its roots in the ancient republican principles of civic duty and citizen participation. From ancient Athens forward, both duty and participation were considered necessary to guarantee that the republic, every republic, […]

Midway through September, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign ran into some turbulence. Captured on a clandestine camera, Romney was found to have disparaged the alleged entitlement mentality of the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income tax. But even as Romney’s liberal critics rejoiced in his embarrassment, they seemed strangely unapologetic about their own brand […]

We’re Not Broke, a new award-winning documentary, may convince viewers that the American tax-collection system is even more compromised than they thought. The title may elicit objections from deficit hawks, but the film shows that Uncle Sam has enormous assets in addition to its towering debts; the U.S. Treasury just isn’t taking in nearly as […]

In Germany, 91 percent of the electorate would have voted for Obama. This comes close to the “Enver Hoxha Standard”, the 98 percent regularly won by Albania’s eternal dictator in the Soviet days. Barack Obama’s harvest in Germany is the mother of all landslides, rendered even more awesome by the miniscule 4 percent Mitt Romney […]