 |
 |
|
|
|
||
Perhaps Andrew has a different idea of what a healthy democracy looks like, but how does the parade of unrepentant criminals that has appeared before the Chilcot inquiry show that there is any government accountability in Britain? How many indictments of former and current members of the British government have been handed down because of [...]
Filed under: Britain, foreign policy, politics
Despite their conservatism, Qom’s pilgrims seemed motivated not by passion for Ahmadinejad—I never heard anyone say his name, though the “Leader” Ali Khamenei was mentioned repeatedly over outdoor loudspeakers—but by a total denial of politics, and a preference for something much simpler. In Tehran the previous week, I’d heard many rumors about protests, violence, provocation. [...]
And yet what our genius centrists are calling for, in effect, is to hand over even more authority to these least popular and least successful elements of the Obama administration. They are basically telling Mr. Obama that the way to court alienated blue-collar voters is by extolling entrepreneurship and toning down the administration’s occasional anti-Wall [...]
But the failure to achieve a second, explicit, U.N. resolution was a political problem, not a legal obstacle. Few of the anti-war movement care to recall that the Kosovan War was, if anything, predicated upon a flimsier legal case than the Iraqi intervention. ~Alex Massie One of the reasons why I keep revisiting the illegality [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The idea of “the rogue state” assumed the existence of an international community, united behind supposedly universal Western values and interests, that could agree on who the renegades are and how to deal with them. By the late 1990s this community was already dissolving, with the rise of China, the revival of Russia, and the [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Now, space exploration is grand but it’s hard to argue that it’s a pressing priority in times of fiscal difficulty. And committing billions simply so a handful of astronauts can see a pretty picture of the earth seems a reasonably extravagant use of the public purse. For that matter, if the idea is that visiting [...]
The NBC/WSJ poll that came out earlier this week has some interesting results. The midterms are just over nine months away, so it seemed worth checking the questions related to the elections. The generic ballot shows a Democratic edge of 2 points, 44-42, but we should bear in mind that the RCP average for the [...]
Filed under: politics
Nestled in the list of small-business initiatives that President Barack Obama announced in the State of the Union address was a measure providing incentives to small firms that hire employees and raise wages. The details of the initiative, which Mr. Obama is expected to highlight when he visits Baltimore today, include a $5,000 tax credit [...]
Filed under: politics
For the last year, Republicans have worked, assiduously and effectively, to derail the Democrats’ legislative agenda. This, in fact, was a constant in Axelrod’s remarks. “They made a decision they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed.” It’s been an inarguable success for the Republican Party. Health-care [...]
Filed under: politics
Last week, Michael Barone compared the GOP win in Massachusetts to the 1974 special election to fill Gerald Ford’s House seat in Michigan, which was at least an interesting comparison, but now he has concluded that this is another 1974. In January 1974, Nixon’s approval rating had fallen to 23%. By the time of the [...]
Filed under: politics