Every election cycle someone–often many someones–solemnly informs us that this is the most important election of our lifetime. And so it is, although not for the transitory reasons any one candidate might suggest. In fact each election is the most important because it means that contrary to basic human instinct, some might even say contrary to logic and reason, we are still having an election. | Read More »
Unnoticed by many, there is another crucial election taking place in our hemisphere this fall–this Sunday in fact. Fourteen-year incumbent president Hugo Chávez (who re-wrote the Venezuelan constitution to allow him to run for unlimited terms of office–in effect to become President for Life) is facing off against former Mariana province governor Enrique Capriles Rodanski. Given Chávez’ legendarily tight grip on his country’s failing democracy, | Read More »
Recent reports of al Qaida infiltration of the Syrian resistance have strengthened our national reluctance to intervene in the slow-motion train wreck that is the Syrian civil war. After all, we hardly want to be in the position of arming our enemies (that didn’t go so well with the Mexican drug cartels), and should they be successful an al Qaida backed regime is one of | Read More »
Ozzie Guillén, manager of the newly re-minted Miami Marlins, has earned himself a five-game suspension by declaring his affection for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Time magazine: “I love Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that son of a bitch is still there.” Many entities survive through unsavory methods—cockroaches and kudzu | Read More »
Robert Kagan’s The World America Made (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) is an extended essay on the role of the United States in the current global order. Kagan identifies political and economic freedom combined with military strength as the foundation of the enduring American power that has encouraged the current historical “wave” towards democracy, and argues the unique nature of this power has played a pivotal | Read More »
Like Beijing, Hong Kong faces a “leadership transition” this year. In the 15 years since control of the island passed from Great Britain to China, successive rulers have been chosen by a committee of officials–and while large for a committee (1,200 people), this body is only a fraction of Hong Kong’s 7.1 million inhabitants, who have no voice in their government. But that may be | Read More »
In the most recent round of violent protests that have rocked Greece, a group of aggrieved Communist party members went up onto the Acropolis and hung banners from the massive rock. “Down with Dictatorship” they proclaimed (in English as well as in Greek for the benefit of the western media and/or relevant parties in London and Washington, D.C.). The message was not particularly subtle: Here, | Read More »
While the recent increase of attention to the ongoing carnage in Syria is a welcome change from the Obama administration’s collective state of denial over the past ten months, signals remain mixed, and our policy is unclear if not non-existent. This week alone, for example, we got the welcome news that the Pentagon is preparing military options on Syria for the President, but at the | Read More »
Like most parents, I have become adept at the rapid fire muting of the satellite radio when shepherding my children around in the car. Not only are the ads wildly inappropriate, but the news itself is not far behind. To wit, this morning when they caught a few sentences of Weinergate. The natural impulse is to shield them from the squalor, to turn off the | Read More »
There seems to be some confusion over why the Israelis should be so hostile to President Obama’s suggestion that the two-state solution be achieved by returning the Jewish state to its 1967 borders. The President’s supporters argue that since these borders were previously acceptable to Israel, they should be acceptable now. After all, pre-1967 Israel fought to defend those borders and they were on the table | Read More »
The abrupt arrest of IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of sexual assault against an employee at the New York hotel where he was staying are being treated as shocking in France. This is a “coup de tonnerre,” a bolt from the blue, not to mention a body blow to the socialist party he was to represent in the upcoming elections. Everyone in Paris claims | Read More »
“Inheritance” is a neutral word–it can be bad and good depending on the circumstance. You don’t get to pick what you get any more than you can pick your parents. On the one hand, you have things like photo albums and trusts funds. On the other you have the lasting repercussions of bad behavior, the sins of the father if you will, that can reach | Read More »
The news of Osama bin Laden’s demise has been a long time coming–so long in fact that it has taken some hours to sink in and become real. A decade can be a long time when you are grieving and angry and needful of closure. The scenes of jubilation that spread from ballpark to subway to the White House seemed like a movie in the | Read More »
In the most recent Obama administration shake up, Bob Gates will be leaving the Department of Defense, Leon Pannetta will move from the CIA to DoD, General David Petraeus will move from Afghanistan to the CIA and Ryan Crocker will move from Texas A&M (from whence came Bob Gates) to Afghanistan. As in the previous major changes in the White House staff and the economic | Read More »
Speaking at Tufts University on April 8th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had one of those marvelous moments of self-revelation in which a usually polished politician speaking casually and without a script among like-minded friends says what everyone is thinking–what everyone knows to be true–in this case what is considered an unquestionable “fact” by their audience. As you can see from the video, there was | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}