The season turned today here at the stately Mead manor in the exclusive borough of Queens.  We have had a long and lush fall; the leaves turned yellow and gold in the award-winning gardens that stretch away from the windows of the blogging room, but up through this morning they clung to the branches.  Autumn […]

President Obama, I suspect, is on a voyage of discovery as he heads into Asia this week. Much of what he finds will displease him.Asia is one part of the world where the Obama administration’s attempt to blame all its problems on its predecessor rings hollow.  George W. Bush did not satisfy everyone in Asia, […]

Today’s headline in the Washington Post tells us that our Ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, opposes the sending of more U.S. and allied troops to Afghanistan, putting him at odds with the commanding general in that war, General Stanley McChrystal. Eikenberry happens to be a general, too—3-star instead of 4-star, but who’s counting? The […]

It seems appropriate to note this Veterans Day that Americans remain willing to use military force to defend allied nations.  According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 78% of Americans favor rushing to Canada’s defense and only 16% disagree.The mother country is in second place; 73% think the United States should defend Great Britain.Tied for third […]

Rasmussen polls have long shown the GOP with a slight advantage on the “generic ballot” question asking voters whether they support unnamed Democratic or Republican candidates for congress.  In general, because Rasmussen polls “likely voters” rather than adults, it tends to get numbers that are a little more Republican and conservative than polls focusing on […]

I strongly believe that the United States should lift our embargo against Cuba.  It’s long been the strategic goal of the Castro regime to keep the embargo up both for propaganda purposes and to keep the island’s population as dependent on the state as possible.  We should stop helping them.However we should do this with […]

John Judis is one of America’s smartest liberal thinkers; this isn’t just because he has a Gigantic Brain, which he does.  It’s also because he makes smart choices about what to think about.  In a short piece in The New Republic, he looks at what he calls the ‘anti-statist’ tradition in America, the dislike and […]

One sign of an apocalyptic age like ours is the frequency with which news headlines read like science fiction.  This story from the AP describes a scientific conference held under the auspices of the Vatican Observatory and ending yesterday at which a group of scientists examined the evidence for extra-terrestrial life.The article takes all the […]

John Allen Mohammed was killed by the State of Virginia tonight.  He received a lethal injection at 9:06 and was declared dead at 9:11.I don’t have anything against the death penalty.  I realized that nineteen years ago on a visit to Auschwitz.  In front of a killing chamber where Jews and other victims were gassed […]

How much do crooked politicians and others steal every year?Nobody really knows, of course, but as the BBC reports today, the UN estimates that $1.6 trillion each year is stolen each year and moved across national borders. Tragically, much of this money is stolen from poor countries.  It is bread taken out of the mouths […]