The EU has faulted both sides in the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict for violations of international law. Russia, unsurprisingly, broke international law by its invasion of Georgia and its attacks on Georgian civilian infrastructure. Though if that’s against international law, color me confused as to nations are supposed to fight wars and if any of them have ever done so. The [...]
The U.S. government is probing the death of Bill Sparkman, a census worker in rural Kentucky. He was found hanged in the woods with the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. I doubt Glenn Beck means to goad his viewers into violence when he tells them the federal government is trying to destroy American democracy, but he probably shouldn’t be [...]
When you’re working to govern an entire nation, you can’t please everyone. Particularly people with highly particular political preferences; they tend to be the most prickly when disappointed (though you’d think they’d get used to it). So it’s a rare joy when a political figure does something that seems eminently sensible and pleasing, and with Obama’s announcement on missile defense [...]
In one strictly limited sense, modern man has become as God; he has acquired the ability to destroy the world. After the invention of the atomic bomb in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union acquired massive reserves of the devices. While many in both nations would like to decrease the megatonnage they aim at each other, the prospect [...]
So unsurprisingly, the Iranians now have enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb. I say unsurprising because, well, the U.S. has been wringing its hands over it for years now. While apparently the 2007 intelligence assessment that they aren’t actively designing a bomb was accurate, it’s now within their physical capacity to build one if they get that design work started [...]
In a plot twist which should surprise approximately no one, it seems that the August presidential election in Afghanistan was not entirely on the up-and-up. It’s not that the United States is particularly keen to create a warlord-ruled narco-”state” in perpetual war and essentially ungovernable…it’s more just that nations with no literacy, centralized power, or democratic tradition probably aren’t reasonable [...]
So I actually just returned to school from a summer spent working in Tokyo, and so I have been following with great interest the returns from the recent Japanese election. As you may have heard if you’ve heard anything, the bare-bones outline is this: the Liberal Democratic Party (neither liberal or democratic, truth be told), after 50 years of almost [...]
You know who is one of the most dependable Democrats in the Senate right now? Arlen Spector (D-PA). It does not take any great insight to figure out why that is; Spector is rightly afraid of a successful primary challenge from Joe Sestak over his insufficient progressivism. On the Republican side of the aisle is further proof positive: the threats [...]
So in some areas (civil liberties and wars come to mind), there is not so much daylight to be found between President Obama and his predecessor. But in other areas that are not always so visible, it is clear that Obama does intend to pursue a somewhat ambitious liberal agenda. And one of those extremely contentious yet poorly publicized battles [...]
The Sri Lankan government is about to liquidate the last remaining holdout of the Tamil Tigers. Their stalemate of a year ago has been broken, and the Tigers are down to apparently a mere four square miles on the coast of Sri Lanka. With fifty thousand civilian hostages being used as human shields, it’s hardly surprising that the Sri Lankan [...]
But then, every week lately is a tough week for Republicans. First the Republicans became the semi-official Torture Party. Then, while the Republicans are still bragging about stripping the “porky” stimulus provisions for flu pandemic preparedness, we have this pesky little flu pandemic. Finally, the humiliation has become too much for at least one Republican Senator. Facing a very tough [...]
GM has come forward this morning and announced that the only way they will survive is to be nationalized. That’s right, they are voluntarily asking to be taken over by the Department of the Treasury. This seems worrying, for a number of obvious reasons. If they’re incorporated into the government and that becomes the status quo, there’s a real risk [...]
When the Secretary of State does things like visit Lebanon to express her not-so-subtly-veiled hope that Hezbollah will not win the elections, I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing. One does not have to wish for a Hezbollah victory to have some doubts about the real wisdom of our involving ourselves so heavily in the domestic politics of another [...]
Actually, I’d guess Sam meant to say “reactive” rather than “reactionary”. In a narrow technical sense, however, I’d define the Republican Party as reactionary. While the term is often pejorative, it simply means a group or ideology that seeks a return to a previous state. The Republican Party is pretty open about its desire to roll back the machinery of the [...]
