As longtime readers know, I’m not particularly skeptical about climate science, suitably wrapped with the inevitable cautions and caveats about complex natural systems whose history and dynamics are imperfectly understood, but I am deeply skeptical about climate policy.  Green climate policies tend to be otherworldly utopian fantasies like the global carbon treaty or heavy handed, […]

In American states, past voting trends and the number of electoral college votes up for grabs shape presidential candidates’ campaigns, as Gerald Seib describes in the WSJ: The important thing to remember about a presidential election is that it isn’t a contest to win the popular vote nationwide. It is a contest to win in […]

Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayeb, the head of one of the most important centers of learning in the Islamic world, wrote a remarkably tolerant article in the Egyptian government daily newspaper Al-Ahram back in June. Translated excerpts of the article recently appeared at MEMRI: The Koran, which Many Muslims know by heart, affirms that had God […]

In an interesting article on the federal law code, the Wall Street Journal discusses the weakening of criminal intent standards: For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a […]

The riots that scarred much of London last month came as a shock to the British public. As often happens with social upheavals of this type, the chattering class has spent the past few weeks discussing the cause of the riots, and has finally settled on a simple explanation: single mothers. The New York Times […]

Why hasn’t the biggest economic crisis in two generations rekindled the political left?American leftists are not alone in asking this question; the failure of the latest recession to fuel anti-capitalist or at least anti-corporate rage in most of the developed world has European social democrats scratching their heads.  The 2008 financial crisis was, from a […]

A financial plutocracy contributed to Britain's demise as a global power. Is the same fate in store for America?

China’s message to the Eurozone: don’t count on us. From the WSJ: “We can’t just go save someone,” said Gao Xiqing, president of China Investment Corp., China’s huge sovereign wealth fund. “We’re not saviors. We have to save ourselves,” he said at a weekend [IMF] panel discussion.If Europe decided to issue euro-zone bonds—debt guaranteed by […]

They say a diplomat is someone sent abroad to lie for his country. While that is not always the case, it certainly matches the job description for the Greek finance minister this weekend. In the Washington Post: Greece’s commitment to the euro is “firm and irrevocable,” the country’s finance minister said Sunday as euro-zone officials […]

The long stalemate in Syria is taking an ominous and possibly important new turn.  Syrian dissidents appear to be forming an embryonic army to challenge the Assad regime’s violent repression of largely peaceful protests.  The Washington Post reports: For now, the shadowy entity seems mostly to consist of some big ambitions, a Facebook page and […]