It feels like the bad old days of the Bush administration as the whole world lines up to criticize American leadership — or the lack thereof. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said the US-backed idea to leverage the EU bailout fund so that the same amount of money could bail out bigger debt disasters was […]

I’ve just come back from a week of teaching, lecturing and conversation in Israel and the West Bank, and nothing I saw there has led me to change my basic view of the situation.  Peace is not at hand in the Middle East because neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are really willing to accept […]

If you read recent statements by senior US officials on the relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and attacks on US and NATO interests, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that a state of war exists between an agency of the government of Pakistan and the United States of America.As the FT reports this morning, Adm […]

That’s what we’ve been seeing on world markets since Thursday trading began in Asia; this morning it hit the US with the kind of sickening thud we remember too well from 2008. Amid the general hurricane of bad economic news a few things stand out. Chinese stocks fell almost 5 percent and key real estate […]

Recently I posted a short piece saying that the specter of a “Christianist” takeover of the United States is a figment of overheated imaginations, mostly on the left.  Every few years a leftie journalist dabbles in right wing websites and obscure theological debates and emerges with horrifying tales of totalitarian Dominionist plots to turn the […]

On this tenth anniversary of 9/11, Via Meadia reflects on one the most painful unintended consequences of that day – the decimation of Iraq’s once significant minority religious groups. Before the invasion of Iraq – which, despite the changing rhetoric used to justify it, would not have happened without the 9/11 attacks – about 1.5 […]

[Over the next few days there will be some posts reflecting on the world 10 years after 9/11.  This is one.] Sometimes it’s important to step back from the daily news and look at the bigger picture. A new Gallup poll on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 brings some welcome news — there appears to […]

The USPS is one of the great surviving examples of the blue social model and, not surprisingly, it is going down the tubes.  Technological change has made its original mission of delivering vital information and private correspondence obsolete.  Judging by what comes in through the mail slot at the stately Mead manor these days, the […]

Rhode Island is one of the bluest states in the country, and one where public sector unions have long worked with sympathetic politicians to create a true blue system of well paid public employees retiring comfortably on generous pensions with cost of living raises automatically thrown in. The only problem is that the state could […]

[A Vintage Via Meadia essay originally published one year ago, republished as a new cohort of first year students tries to figure out how to get the most out of college — and a new cohort of parents tries to figure out how to pay for it.]The anxious emails from students are hitting my in-boxes […]