To most Americans, the U.S. Constitution is the foundation of our democracy, a clear manifestation of American values, and the reason for much of our success as a nation. Not so the New York Times. In a recent article, the Grey Lady appears bored with our aging charter, pining for the sexier constitutions of newer […]

Via Meadia has never shied from confronting the development world for its penchant for unseemly aid boondoggles. That doesn’t mean we’re intractable pessimists on Africa. Far from it.Consider one of the region’s problems: intra-African trade scarcely exists. As the WSJ reports, many African nations lack both adequate infrastructure and coherent border policies with neighbors, with […]

The Chicago Police Department is trying some rather unorthodox programs. This NYT story profiles a new course taught at Chicago’s police academy, where uniformed officers receive instruction from crime novelist Charlie Newton on how to improve their writing skills as preparation for writing police novels of their own.Via Meadia has nothing against the idea in […]

An inevitable question as we look at the demise of the 20th century economy is how shall we live? As the manufacturing that remains to us becomes more automated, reducing employment even as output climbs; as agriculture continues to need fewer hands; as outsourcing and technological change sweep through the knowledge guilds and the learned […]

Conventional political wisdom holds that Obama’s reelection fate is bound up with the economy. If employment is up, he’s in good shape; if it remains stagnant, we may see some turnover on Pennsylvania Avenue. If this is true, the President should be cheered by the past few months’ employment numbers. December’s jobs report, which had […]

Via Meadia has been reporting for months on the paranoids who allege that behind Mitt Romney’s businesslike affect lies a nefarious plot to smuggle a Mormon theocracy into American government.  As we’ve seen before, even major, respectable papers like the Times are not immune to these fever dreams.And as one state after another votes in […]

In common usage blasphemy means words and actions which constitute an insult to God or other sacred entities. To the modern mind the term may seem obsolete, a leftover from primitive superstition. It is anything but obsolete to many people in the contemporary world.Toward the end of January two stories involving the issue of blasphemy […]

I will be spending much of today at West Point discussing US grand strategy with cadets and faculty, so posting is likely to be intermittent.  The next post-blue essay should be ready sometime this evening and there are a few other posts in the pipeline.

Here’s something we don’t see every day: the Times‘ op-ed page sticking it to the greens in a devastating piece by columnist Joe Nocera. Here at Via Meadia we’ve flagged the President’s decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline as one of the most baffling and damaging decisions of his Administration, and now this viewpoint […]

The American diplomatic push in Asia continues as word spreads that the director of the CIA may soon visit Myanmar, the former Chinese ally that has been moving rapidly toward deep cooperation with the Pacific entente. On a recent visit to longtime US ally Thailand, General Petraeus is reported (by the New York Times) to […]