It’s Christmas Eve today and time for the oldest tradition at Via Meadia, going back to 2009: our annual Yule Blog when we update and present our thirteen posts of Christmas running from the preparatory Advent blog on Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night. During the holiday season, we will blog on a light holiday schedule through New Year’s Day. On January 2 we will be back at full force.

What the rise and fall of a 12th-century Islamic empire does (and doesn’t) tell us about the rise (and fall?) of ISIS.

When asked whether big government, big labor, or big business was a bigger threat, 69 percent of respondents to a recent Gallup poll name big government as “the biggest threat to the country in the future.”

When things like this start to happen, it’s a sign that the foundations of a government are weakening.

Remembering Fatema Mernissi, a woman on a mission to redefine boundaries for women in the Muslim world.

It is a good sign that even a deep blue news source like the NYT acknowledges the retirement problem.

The ever-expanding boundaries of religious pluralism in America.

Modern Russia, the Obama Administration seems to think, is a fairly normal autocracy with which one can ultimately cooperate on occasion. But reality has never quite fit this “realist” reading of Russia.

A new paper estimates that recent minimum wage increases have cost about 100,000 to 200,000 jobs nationally.

Why is the Pentagon placating Beijing?