According to a survey of historians, experts and practitioners by Michael Cohen, 4 of the 5 worst foreign policy presidents of the 20th century were Democrats: Truman, Wilson, Carter and LBJ.  (Nixon was the sole Republican to make the Bottom 5; George W. Bush served in the 21st century and, luckily for him, wasn’t eligible.)Only […]

Eli Lake’s must read piece in TNR lays out the geography of foreign policy in the emerging GOP field.  Bottom line: necons in decline, isolationists contained, engage with Islam contentious.  Reading this piece will help you make sense of the news.

Glenn Greenwald is not the left’s most dispassionate thinker, and his bitterness at what he sees as the White House’s betrayal of its liberal base has been growing for some time.  What looks to him like a comprehensive cave-in by President Obama on the debt ceiling talks has inspired him to a comprehensive attack on […]

The glamorous and exclusive residential borough of Queens is truly a special place.  For the skeptics, comes word from Philip Gourevitch in The New Yorker that in this borough at least, even the lowly pig can aspire to greater things.  Eat your heart out, Manhattan.  Queens is the home of kosher pork.

Religion is a touchy subject for the Chinese government; an independent source of social cohesion that stands outside the state worries a government concerned about keeping an increasingly rambunctious society stable.In recent weeks (here and here), Catholics have found themselves on the wrong side of Chinese authorities. This week, a leader of one of China’s […]

The sad and sorry story of priestly pedophilia is still making waves — this time in Ireland where the Vatican’s ambassador has been recalled to Rome following harsh words from the current taoiseach (a Gaelic word meaning leader of the Irish government; it is usually pronounced ‘prime minister’).Archbishop Cranmer, the Reformation archbishop who mysteriously manages […]

MEK, a controversial Iranian opposition group, has been on the US list of terrorist organizations since 1997.  The group says it renounced terror in 2001 and wants off the list.I have no idea whether this would be a good thing or not.  The Iranian government hates the idea; some Iranian-Americans who support a softer US […]

From the BBC: A top US adviser on Iraq has accused the US military of glossing over an upsurge in violence, just months before its troops are due to be withdrawn.Iraq is more dangerous now than a year ago, said a report issued by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart W Bowen […]

Forget the 2012 Olympics.  An extraordinary exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci paintings and drawings will be at the National Gallery on London’s Trafalgar Square November 9 of this fall through February 5 of next year.  That’s usually a dark and cold time in the UK, but cheap flights are easier to find at that time […]

Supreme Venezuelan leader, grand caudillo of the Bolivarian revolution and aspiring nemesis of the US Hugo Chavez is sounding a softer note as he returns to Venezuela from cancer surgery in Cuba.  We need to persuade the middle classes they are needed, he said, denouncing efforts by overzealous underlings to push the Bolivarian revolution too […]