Politics & Current Affairs

Let me open this blog with a realistic statement: It is and will remain the case that the best way to feel good for members of our species is to […]

In the history of postwar American liberalism, there has been a slow but steady decline of which liberals have been oblivious, says the editor of The American Spectator Emmett Tyrell.

A bigger problem than our undisciplined classification system may be our undisciplined diplomats, says Judge Richard Posner in the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal.

John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration, says the inconvenience of body scanners and pat downs is a small price to pay for safety.

Putting U.S. secrets on the Internet…requires a reconceptualization of sabotage and espionage — and the laws to punish and prevent them.

The perception is that the minds of the 22 FIFA members were already made up, either through vote trading or through friendships and contacts over many years.

The United States clearly is like other countries in some respects and unlike them in other respects. Exceptionalism thus isn’t of much use as an analytic construct.

Despite the reality of fighting two foreign wars, it is hard to recall a time when foreign policy issues played so diminished a role in the American public’s thinking.

The WikiLeaks cables reveal a profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership, says the world-renowned political dissident and linguist.

Optimism about a cure for HIV/AIDS is the highest it’s been since David Ho pioneered the Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment (HAART) drug cocktail in 1996.  Just last week, the powerful […]

The biggest problem that the Church faces in backing off its condemnation of contraception is a potential loss of religious authority, which is no small matter in a hierarchical church.

Age-of-consent laws presume that adolescents lack the maturity to make healthy decisions when it comes to sex.

Before shopping and football, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a holiday for American solidarity.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, N.A.T.O.’s purpose dissolved. Still, America’s embrace of “collective security” has since become a rationale for subsuming Europe’s military autonomy.

Has 2010 been a watershed year for Western politics or just a continuation of the move towards a neoliberalised system? History professor Mark LeVine gives an answer.

Sorting out America’s fiscal mess is relatively simple. What’s needed is political courage. Tax code reform and spending cuts are essential, says The Economist.

There seems no end in sight to Japan’s current decline, as jobs are lost, pensions cut, companies move overseas and social cohesion disintegrates.

Nearly 1 million children work full time in Bolivia’s tin mines, in cemeteries, on buses, or in the markets. It’s a tough life, but at least they’re unionized.

A new book tells the story on the “triumph of capitalism” in the U.S. in the remarkable 35 years after the Civil War when American economy exploded in size.

Talk of bribing lawyers, proximity to the mafia and sex scandals with teenagers have yet to dislodge Silvio Berlusconi. So how can Italy get rid of him, asks Tobias Jones.

In the last two months, dozens of anti-piracy groups, copyright lawyers and pro-copyright outfits have been targeted by a group of Anonymous Internet ‘vigilantes’.

Polemicist and atheist Christopher Hitchens met his toughest opponent yet when diagnosed with cancer. It doesn’t yet seem to have altered his beliefs on Iraq, on Islam, or God.

The Independent says Aung San Suu Kyi’s release is cause for celebration – but we have to be realistically doubtful about the prospects of change in Burma.

Less-visible insecurities linger from its recent chaotic past and drive this country’s politics. China’s strengths, and its weaknesses, should be measured with care.

In 2008, 41,269 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with HIV, an increase of 8% from only three years earlier. Known infections make up only 75% of total infections, leaving […]

Much of the privacy that so many of us cherish has been an economic fluke. Tracking technology has spun far out of control but the privacy problem is really one of our own making.

It will take a revived patriotism to motivate Americans to do what needs to be done. …How can you love your country if you hate the other half of it?

I secretly wish Obama was only human. As much as I admire his adult behavior, it would be understandable if he stood up to the bullies on the right.

International institutions have been weakened by the economic crisis. Harvard’s Dani Rodik says individuals countries are once again competing economically.

Military veteran and critic of American militarism, Andrew Bacevich says the future of American foreign policy is bleak should the long war against terrorism continue.