I review books on the United States for Foreign Affairs; that means every couple of months a huge box of books arrives at the stately Mead manor and I go through piles of books trying to decide which ones to read for review. It’s a lot of work for not much product; the “capsule” reviews […]

Yet another European summit ended today with yet another round of announcements. Yet again Germany brought Europe and the world to the edge of a global market meltdown and yet again Germany blinked at the last moment. As the relief rally sweeps around the globe (many European stock markets are up two percent or more […]

Not Democrats, not Republicans. The biggest winner in the Obamacare ruling was the Supreme Court.Regular readers know that I think that Obamacare is a flawed approach to some real problems and will end up giving us a health care system under which the young subsidize the middle age as costs continue to rise. Worse, we […]

On Tuesday Via Meadia blogged about a decision by a court in Cologne that ruled “the body of the child is irreparably and permanently changed by a circumcision.” Our take was that by banning what for thousands of years has been seen as a core element of Jewish identity, law and tradition, the court was […]

The academic world has been in a tizzy over the (possibly soon to be reversed) ouster of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan by the Board of Visitors earlier this month. Much of the controversy has stemmed from the fact that the reasons for her ouster are less than clear; Sullivan was almost universally well-regarded […]

The biggest scam going in American financial life may be the collusive effort by Wall Street, the political class, and public sector unions to use union retirement money to prop up Wall Street speculation.Step One: state politicians promise big pension and health care benefits to their unionized work forces, but don’t set aside enough money […]

George Monbiot, one of the world’s leading environmentalists and a writer for the left-leaning British Guardian has an assessment of the Rio+20 environmental summit that tracks pretty closely with my own. Writes the anguished Monbiot, We know it’s rubbish, but we allow our hopes to be raised, only to witness 190 nations arguing through the […]

Last week we marked a major milestone here at the stately Mead manor in the glamorous and exclusive residential borough of Queens. I reached the grand old age of 50.I see a lot of you out there using your pencils and calculators… 2012 take away 1952: that doesn’t leave fifty, you are saying.  That’s sixty, […]

Generals and DOD officials must be in the midst of a panicked meeting within the inner sanctum of the Pentagon, because a crack team of Russian investigative journalists have just exposed the darkest and most potent secret of American world power: sex.Read and learn: Ever since the end of World War 2, America has controlled […]

After we expressed our concerns during NATO’s Libyan war that the afterparty was likely to be chaotic and unpleasant, we’ve been watching the horrific humanitarian and political consequences unwind in several places.Most recently, Via Meadia has been keeping a careful eye on the growing troubles in northern Mali and the storied historical city of Timbuktu for […]