Michael Auslin
Michael Auslin is a resident scholar and the director of Japan studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specializes in Asian regional security and political issues.
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It was once hard to imagine that the Western would ever go out of fashion. As epitomized by the novels of Zane Grey, the movies of John Wayne, and television shows such as The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke, the genre ... -
How Trump Can Seize the Initiative with Xi Jinping
Which Donald Trump will show up to greet Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday in Mar-a-Lago? Will it be the fire-breathing candidate of the campaign trail and transition, who called China a “cheater” on trade and who threatened to reconsider ... -
In the South China Sea and Elsewhere, East Asia Stumbles Toward Conflict
On Tuesday, the long-awaited ruling from the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration may mark a legal watershed in Asian international relations. Brought by the Philippines in January 2013, the case asks the tribunal to rule against China’s activities in ... -
Are We Going the Way of Rome?
The insatiable appetite of broadcast media for compelling images has elevated Americans’ brawling at political rallies to a central place in the 2016 campaign. Whenever adjudication of political differences happens in the streets — instead of inside the voting booth — or with ... -
Trump's Isolationism Threatens Japan's Security
Japan has been one of Donald Trump’s favorite targets. Sounding as though he just stepped out of a 1985 Delorean, Trump has railed against Japan’s economic policies, concluding that it is stealing U.S. jobs and undercutting our currency, ... -
Trump Still at Sea on Asia
In his widely touted foreign-policy address today, sponsored by the Center for the National Interest, Donald Trump wandered all over the map, literally and figuratively. Amid swipes at the D.C. foreign-policy establishment (“the old people don’t know what ... -
Thirty-Five Years Ago Today, This Man Saved Ronald Reagan's Life
Today is the 35th anniversary of John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, the last time an assassin came so close to success. Last year, I wrote on the Corner about meeting Jerry Parr, the head of Reagan’... -
North Korea's H-Bomb Test Is a Risk-Raising Nuclear Game Changer
If North Korea’s claim of having tested a hydrogen bomb holds up, then East Asia’s nuclear risk has gone up a magnitude. Mastering the technology of a fusion weapon is not easy, and skepticism abounds that the impoverished, ... -
A Glimpse of a Vanishing American Character
Sometimes you run across something that justifies all the hand-wringing about the vapidity of Barack Obama, the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the inanity of cable news, the new college Jacobins, and the coarsening of the American character. ... -
Professorial Pre-emption: The Next Phase of Surrender
While public attention has been wrenched away from college campuses to the bloody streets of San Bernardino, the next phase in the surrender of the university to the forces of grievance is beginning. Fearing the wrath of the small-but-vocal mob, ... -
A Secret Service Legend Passes
As many readers no doubt have heard, Jerry Parr, the U.S. Secret Service agent who helped save Ronald Reagan from an assassin’s bullets, passed away last Friday, at age 85, from congestive heart failure. As the head of the ... -
Thucydides on the Iran Deal
There’s not much to add to the torrent of condemnation of Barack Obama’s deal with Iran. President Obama justified the deal in part by appealing to hope, arguing that in ten years time Iran may no longer pose ... -
75 Years after the Battle of Britain, the Skies Are Becoming Contested Once More
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the official start of the Battle of Britain, the first major military campaign in history fought entirely in the skies. While the Channel Islands had been invaded and occupied on June 30, 1940, and the first ... -
It’s Time to Stop Pretending Beijing Is a Partner
This week, top American and Chinese officials will meet in Washington for the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED;). The dialogue, which the Obama administration began in 2009, was once touted as one of Washington’s most important bilateral meetings, ... -
Obama Needs to Respond to the Chinese Government Hack — and All Their Other Provocations, Too
The news flashing through Washington, that Chinese hackers stole up to 4 million federal employees’ personal information, should elicit more than just a shrug from the Obama administration. The breach is yet more evidence that Beijing sees the U.S. as ... -
Bolshies and Menshies
Jay and Andrew, ISIS has other similarities with Lenin’s crowd, as well. Like the radical revolutionaries of 1917, they know that shaping public opinion is a crucial element in victory. They use the slickest (if also, perhaps, most horrifying) propaganda ... -
Japan Begins to Walk the Walk on Defense Reform
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, fresh off a successful official visit to the United States, where he focused largely on security issues, has returned home to follow through on longstanding promises to submit crucial defense-reform legislation to the Japanese Diet. ... -
Could U.S. Brinksmanship in the South China Sea Mean War with Beijing?
The security world is buzzing over a Wall Street Journal article yesterday that the Obama administration is considering sending U.S. naval vessels and military planes into the 12-mile territorial limit of China’s newly reclaimed islands in the South ... -
Shinzo Abe: Japan Is America’s Willing Ally
By any measure, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the United States has been a resounding success. Having just wrapped up three full days in Washington, D.C., Abe is now in California, visiting both San Francisco and ... -
History Rhymes: Nuclear Weapons Edition
There are numerous cases of military service running in families, sometimes at the highest levels. Think John McCain, for example, whose grandfather was a top admiral in World War II. But there’s generational service and then there’s almost ... -
Re.: America's Accelerating Decline
There’s almost nothing I can disagree with in Dennis Prager’s latest jeremiad from Tuesday. I don’t know if we share a generally pessimistic disposition — certainly an occupational danger for an historian like me — but sensing decay and ... -
Meeting the Man Who Saved Reagan's Life
If you were an adolescent newshound in the late 70s or early 80s, some events probably had an outsized influence on shaping your worldview. Some were frightening and you didn’t understand, like Jonestown, John Wayne Gacy, or the crash ... -
The Left Alinskies Scott Walker
The Left is now in a full-out attack on Scott Walker. The homepage today has good pieces by Jonah, Kevin, and Charles on the latest brouhaha, Walker’s supposed opposition to evolution, linked to his supposedly mysterious dropping out of ... -
How the Democrats Plan to Defeat Scott Walker
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of this Slate article, “Divide and Conquer,” by Jamelle Bouie. He has done the GOP a favor by revealing the Democratic party’s strategic plan for defeating Scott Walker in 2016: smearing him as ... -
There Are No More Living MPs from Before Elizabeth II
A fascinating tidbit from the U.K., where former member of Parliament and BBC journalist John Freeman died this week at the age of 99: Elected to the House of Commons in 1945 and serving until 1955, Freeman was the last living member ... -
No, China Is Not Ready to Cut Off North Korea
Like clockwork, just days after another North Korean provocation, the press begins reporting that this time, China is upset, for real, no kidding. The story at the moment is from the New York Times, headlined “Chinese Annoyance With North Korea ... -
Americans Unite! Organize 'Team America' Viewing Parties in Your Neighborhood!
This cannot stand. We are now entering untrod territory in America: preemptive self-censorship. The news that Paramount Pictures has ordered movie theaters not to show Team America is a new low in corporate cravenness. Hey, suits! We’re talking about ... -
Our Incredible Shrinking Elites
‘Schadenfreude” is probably the most accurate term to reflect how most Americans feel when watching MIT economist Jonathan Gruber grovel before Congress, tortuously trying to explain away his many comments denigrating the American voter. It also applies to the much ... -
Hong Kong’s Democracy Movement, R.I.P.
The tents are gone and the streets are cleared. The thousands of students and older citizens peacefully trying to make their voices heard have gone back home. And the best hope for ensuring that Hong Kong’s fragile and evolving ... -
Can Ash Carter Save the Pentagon?
President Obama has nominated Ash Carter to be his new secretary of defense. Carter would be a good pick in any administration. His bio gives an indication of his experience and talents (I’m probably just brainwashed to believe that ... -
The Democratic World Has Moved Beyond Obama
Halifax — At an annual gathering of government, business, academic, and civil-society leaders from democratic nations here, one theme emerged clearly: The world has moved beyond Barack Obama. Whereas debate over Obama and his policies figured heavily in previous gatherings of ... -
McCain: Failed Korea Nuke Negotiators Now Bringing You Iran Talks
Halifax — As news spreads that the failed Iranian nuclear talks require a second extension, this time for seven-months, U.S. officials at an international security conference here essentially admitted that North Korea was now a nuclear power, underscoring the failure ... -
Obama's Immigration Move: Sliding Towards the Rubicon
Almost a year ago, I wrote on the Corner that President Obama was not the cause of today’s constitutional tensions, but rather a symptom of an imperial presidency that has grown far beyond what the Founders intended. A chief ... -
Obama Goes to Asia
Visiting Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting just days after his party suffered huge losses in the midterm elections, President Obama appears to be playing into the stereotype that domestically beleaguered U.S. presidents focus on foreign policy ... -
Maryland's Laughable Election 'ID' Requirement Fails Again
There’s nothing like flying twelve hours back home from overseas and heading right to the ballot box to layer democratic depression on top of jet lag. That is, if one lives in Maryland. The Old Line State is one ... -
China Channels Putin to Threaten Peaceful Hong Kong Protesters
Reports are still fragmentary, but it appears that pro-Beijing thugs have started harassing and in some cases attacking peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. They apparently are being abetted by members of the business community who are more invested in ... -
Rectifying Names: John Kerry Edition
In last week’s G File, Jonah brought up a concept from Chinese political philosophy that I mentioned to him, the rectification of names. In short, the idea describes when a society reaches a point where its language no longer ... -
The Captain Adrift
President Obama’s widely panned speech on Wednesday probably will do little to raise his poll numbers. Popularity, however, is only a Washington–New York obsession and diversion, especially for those in the media. What really matters is the policy ... -
The Man Meets the Moment
Over on the homepage today, I write about the foreign-policy intelligentsia’s new minimalism, which seeks to excuse the Obama administration’s reactiveness and failures, and which leads to justifying American withdrawal from the world. What I did not explore ... -
China Rips Off Its Mask
There was always a shading of uncertainty about the landmark agreement between China and Great Britain on the decolonization of Hong Kong. It has been just shy of 30 years since Margaret Thatcher and then–prime minister Zhao Zhiyang signed a ... -
Hollywood's Golden Age Fades Away
The news of Lauren Bacall’s passing yesterday may have surprised many who assumed that all of the stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age had long ago left us. Bacall, who was 89 when she died, was perhaps the last of ... -
The Air Force’s Vital Role
The tragic shootdown of the Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine last week proved that the world cannot take freedom of the skies for granted. This new face of war will require an American military transformed to meet new threats. Much ... -
Japan's Military Is Not About to March Through Asia
When Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe announced this week that he would be asking the parliament to pass laws revoking the country’s ban on engaging in collective self-defense, it resulted in a predictable gnashing of teeth and wailing both ... -
If Obama Does Anything in Iraq, It Will Be From the Sky
It took barely 30 months — the tiniest of blips on any timeline — after the last American soldier withdrew for Iraq to collapse into anarchy and jihadist control. The Obama administration’s failure to secure a status of forces agreement (SOFA) to ... -
Iceman and Maverick in Asia's Skies
Just over six months ago, China set up an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over a large part of the East China Sea, including in airspace over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands. Tokyo had already established its own ADIZ decades earlier ... -
George H. W. Bush's Famous Timewatching
This may be best saved for a Friday link, but in reviewing Serhii Plokhy’s book The Last Empire, on the final months of the Soviet Union, for NR, I watched George H. W. Bush’s 1992 State of the Union ... -
Fighting the Great War
Kansas City, Mo. — Vladimir Putin’s conquest of Crimea is raising the specter of early 20th-century power politics. Coming on the eve of the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, Putin’s aggression is a salutary reminder of ... -
Chicago Votes to Go the Way of Detroit
Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is increasingly a textbook example of how far the Democratic party has moved to the left since Bill Clinton’s day. Emanuel, who cut his teeth in Clinton’s administration, just presided over a $1.9 billion increase ... -
How Low Can East Asia Go?
It’s not a perfect analogy, but imagine a militarily powerful Canada, America’s largest trading partner and neighbor, erecting a memorial to John Wilkes Booth. That’s more or less what China did last week, when it unveiled an ... -
Today's "I, Claudius" Dictators
The New Republic is out with an armchair psychological analysis of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, calling it an “intimate profile of Syria’s mass murderer.” It’s the usual my-dad-was-a-dictator-but-I-wanted-to-marry-a-nice-Jewish-girl story about a shy misfit child who was thrust into ...
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The Youths At Midway Versus the Mob at Evergreen State
Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, one of the greatest military victories in the annals of warfare. An American navy that had been battered since Pearl Harbor, with its only three serviceable aircraft carriers and no ... -
Logic, but No Guarantees for Trump’s Foreign Policy
Like Presidents Bush 43 and Obama before him, Donald Trump’s personality so enrages his critics and so enthralls his supporters, that a dispassionate assessment of his actual policies requires almost superhuman effort by observers. Trump does himself no favors with ... -
A Standpont to Consider
A few weeks ago, Andy McCarthy, in a post on the election of Sadiq Khan as mayor of London, quoted from an incisive essay by Daniel Johnson in Standpoint. To my chagrin, I only recently became aware of the magazine ... -
Yes, Obama Should Go to Hiroshima
The White House made a long-awaited announcement this morning that President Obama will indeed visit Hiroshima after the G7 conference in Japan at the end of this month. Obama had been signaling his desire to make such a move essentially ... -
Shinzo Abe’s Diplomatic Balancing Act
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is in Europe this week, holding discussions with European leaders in advance of the G7 summit, which Japan is hosting at the end of this month. Tightening Japan’s ties with Western states has long ... -
Baseball and the Journey of Life
After a long winter of unrelieved bad news, spring has gingerly emerged, and with it, Opening Day. The perennial refreshment of hopes and dreams is a unique element of American culture, one that this year’s election in particular has ... -
Ponderosa on the Hudson: The Parables of Blue Bloods
For those who came of age in the 1970s, television today is as different from the television of our youth as The Twilight Zone must have been to those who grew up on vaudeville. Having first become addicted to television ... -
A New Era in South Korean–Japanese Relations Begins
The news out of Tokyo and Seoul on the eve of the New Year was nothing short of blockbuster. After decades of dispute, recrimination, and ill will, Asia’s two most powerful democracies agreed to resolve one of the bitterest ... -
Since 2009, a More Violent, and Threatened, Nation
The New York Times has a fascinating chart tracking U.S. deaths from extremist attacks since 2002. Adapted from a project of the progressive New America Foundation, the chart separates incidents into “Deadly Jihadist Attacks” and “Deadly Right Wing Attacks.” Leaving ... -
The Pathology of the Professors
It is being claimed a new civil rights era, a stand for social justice against oppression buried deep in some of America’s most privileged bastions. Three weeks ago, the president of the University of Missouri system resigned over charges ... -
American Passivity in the Face of Beijing’s Cyberattack Encourages More Chinese Aggression
Two news stories out this week highlight just how weak the Obama administration’s policy toward China remains. A month after the Office of Personnel Management cyberattack, in which up to 25 million (and maybe more) Americans had their information stolen, ... -
The Atomic Age Began 70 Years Ago Today
Perhaps, at some not-too-distant point in time, we’ll grasp the horrible irony that Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal came just days before the 70th anniversary of the dawn of the atomic age. Exactly seven decades ago today, on ... -
Want to Understand SCOTUS? Read Charles Murray
National Review has been full of great commentary on King v. Burwell, and I’m sure coming days will see more. Already, frustration and disappointment is focusing on how the Court could have so patently ignored the wording ... -
Piling On Obama's Naive Worldview
Just another nail in the coffin of Barack Obama’s naive worldview. Yesterday his Secretary of the Air Force stated that “the biggest threat on my mind [is] the activities of Russia.” Deborah James said this at the Paris Air ... -
Moral Individuals Make for Limited Government: John Adams’s Conservative Message
Beneath news headlines and politics focused on ephemeral issues, the great questions of political life in American society continue to roil. Perhaps the most important is the relationship between the citizen and the state. As conservatives look at a rapidly ... -
Historical Treasures Take a One-Two Punch — from Jihadists Here, Mother Nature There
The human toll of the Islamic State’s rampage through the Middle East is horrifying enough proof that the group must be stopped. Yet while Washington roils with arguments on whether America’s national interests require a more direct U.... -
In Nepal, Another Reminder of the Cost of U.S. Leadership
The news that a missing U.S. Marine Corps helicopter has been found in a mountainous region in Nepal is a grim reminder of the price regularly paid by U.S. service members upholding America’s global role. Six U.... -
Wings of Glory over the U.S. Capitol
The skies over the National Mall today were filled with the roar of warplanes that first took to the skies to fight totalitarianism thousands of miles from America’s shores. In honor of the 70th anniversary of VE Day, the “... -
America's Dystopian Future Played Out at Camden Yards
It was a first for professional baseball: a game with no fans. The Orioles-White Sox contest yesterday at Camden Yards could have come from a Mad Max movie. Two teams playing to an empty stadium, a few ragtag fans peering ... -
It Happens Every Spring
Baseball’s hottest prospect, Kris Bryant, joined the Chicago Cubs on Friday, after two years of steadily increasing anticipation. Bryant, a clean-cut 23-year-old with cerulean blue eyes and close to matinee-idol looks, led the majors in spring training with nine ... -
A Visit to Georgetown's Tocqueville Forum
When I was a student at Georgetown in the second half of the 1980s, it may have been Reagan’s America, but most of us were more interested in Hoya basketball and the city’s drinking age — 18 at the time — ... -
It's Okay To Laugh: SNL 40's Big Night
Like a good chunk of American adults, I watched the whole “Saturday Night Live 40” special Sunday night. Since I haven’t seen an episode of SNL since sometime in the mid 1990s, and only very occasional clips since then, much ... -
Obama’s Crusades
There may not be too much to add to the commentary of Jonah, Eliana, and others on President Obama’s condescending and offensive remarks on the Crusades and slavery at the National Prayer Breakfast speech last week, but there a ... -
Maybe 1914 Wasn’t So Bad: It Gave Us These Famous Babies
One hundred years ago might have been the start of the Great War, but by any measure, the 20th century rocked when it came to famous babies born in the year ’14. Our annual list of centenary births begins with some ... -
Russian Caveat
The sudden financial crisis in Russia is providing a “teachable moment,” as our Democratic friends like to say. In this case, it should be a master class in strategic thinking. Before we get too confident in our assumption that Vladimir ... -
If We Put North Korea Back on List of State Sponsors of Terrorism, Why Not China?
The Obama administration is apparently considering putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in response to its attack on Sony Pictures’ computer system and threats against movie theaters showing the now-canceled film The Interview. The ... -
Where Will Hollywood's Surrender Take Us?
What if Golden Age Hollywood were like today’s Tinsel Town? Charlie Chaplin would never have made The Great Dictator. Hitler’s threats would have led to it being pulled from circulation; one of the greatest anti-Nazi propaganda pieces would ... -
Hyman Rickover, Pathbreaker
One of the few really interesting educational sites on Connecticut’s shoreline is the Submarine Force Library and Museum, located in Groton, near General Dynamics’ Electric Boat yards. Permanently moored on the Thames River, hard by Naval Submarine Base New ... -
Pearl Harbor and Our World of Disorder
Three years ago yesterday, I wrote for the Corner a short reflection on Pearl Harbor, on the occasion of its 70th anniversary. Back then, the big conversation in Washington, D.C., was over looming budget cuts to the military. Some (... -
Obama Has No Praise for the Legal System
Folks on the homepage and the Corner have pretty well covered the appalling violence stemming from Ferguson. Just a footnote that, in neither of his two public statements since the grand jury’s decision, has President Obama uttered a word ... -
Handicapping Hagel's Successor: Homo Politicus v. Homo Bureaucraticus
The expected public apotheosis of soon-to-depart defense secretary Chuck Hagel has begun, with the man many now calling a “scapegoat” receiving praise from those who recently derided him in public or private. Even as Washington engages in this strangely touching ... -
Worst Kept Secret in D.C.: Hagel Wasn't Up for The Job
Heading into Thanksgiving weekend, D.C. is all a twitter with news that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has been fired, er, asked to step down, er, initiated talks about leaving. It has long been a staple of Washington news ... -
PBS's Cold War Nostalgia
One increasingly hears a nostalgia for the Cold War around Washington dining tables or war-gaming tables. “It was so much more understandable,” or “What I’d give for that stability again,” are among the more regular comments. Somewhat as often, ... -
The New York Times Gets It Wrong on Sino-Japan Diplomacy
The New York Times misinterprets a major story out of Asia today on Sino-Japanese relations. Reporter Jane Perlez writes that Beijing and Tokyo “effectively agreed to disagree over the sovereignty of disputed islands in the East China Sea” and move ... -
Gibbon, the Muses, and the Decline of Rome
Rome — I am sitting on the steps of the Capitoline Hill, as close as I can approximate the spot where, exactly 250 years ago today, on October 15, 1764, the 27-year old Edward Gibbon was struck by the muses, leading to perhaps the ... -
Why Beijing Won’t Back Down in Hong Kong
We are still in the early days of the Umbrella Revolution, but the student demonstrations in Hong Kong already present the greatest challenge to the authority of the Chinese government since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement of 1989. There are major ... -
Union of Fear
Both Kevin W. and Tom Rogan have put up excellent pieces arguing why Scottish independence is a bad idea, whether from political or economic calculations. The very latest polls show the referendum is still too close to call, though there ... -
Will Obama Level With America Tonight? It's a Two-Front War
Tonight, President Obama will make yet another national address, this time on his latest plan to “manage” the murderous jihadist butchers known as the Islamic State. Even for political junkies in D.C., this president’s penchant for big, dramatic, ... -
American Declinism
It is hard to tell whether the front-page Sunday Washington Post story by Karen DeYoung and Dan Balz on Obama’s response to a world in crisis is an exercise in damning with faint praise or putting lipstick on a ... -
The Darkness Inside
With his manic voice still echoing in our ears, it is tragic to think that Robin Williams brought joy into the lives of millions, except for the most important person of all: himself. It’s not news that the rich ... -
Lunch and War, a Century Ago
As Americans sat down to their noon repast on Tuesday, July 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, exactly one month after Serbian-trained radical students assassinated Austrian heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand during a brief visit to Sarajevo (... -
Freedom of the Skies at Risk
Back in April 2013, I wrote on The Corner about the dangers of surface-to-air missiles (SAM) for commercial aviation. The world has long taken freedom of aerial navigation for granted. Unlike freedom of the seas, which is still presumed to need ... -
Why the D.C. Media Bubble Is So Dangerous to Democracy
As Iraq implodes, as the White House looks to bury even deeper the scandals surrounding the VA and (still) Benghazi, and as the country begins to contemplate the presidency of someone (Hillary Clinton) who has been at the center of ... -
Iceman and Maverick in Asia's Skies
Just over six months ago, China set up an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over a large part of the East China Sea, including in airspace over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands. Tokyo had already established its own ADIZ decades earlier ... -
Putin Shoots! Putin Scores!
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s cult of personality continues to grow. Apparently bored with the ease of annexing Crimea and drawing big dotted lines down the eastern part of Ukraine, he has found time for a Kim Jong-un–level of ... -
The 900
The Spartans needed only 300 men to hold off tens of thousands of Persians and their allies at Thermopylae. To chitchat with his fellow democratic leaders of the G-7 this week in Europe, Barack Obama required 900, including a small air force ... -
R.I.P. MSgt. Gavulic: A Hero Who Died at Home
While most Americans are eager to put the era of Iraq and Afghanistan behind them, our men and women in uniform don’t get such leisure. They must, under increasingly difficult budget conditions, continue training for the next mission. That ... -
Obama Is a Symptom, Not the Cause
Mario, I agree that every American should read Senator Cruz’s Wall Street Journal op-ed. But I think Cruz misses a point, one that Kevin captured in his awesome rant yesterday, and which I wrote about in articles in Politico ... -
Re: Execution by Starving Dogs?
Kathryn, the North Korean report about Jang Song Thaek being eaten alive by over a hundred starving dogs plumbs new depths even for a regime capable of unlimited barbarism. As a form of political terrorism, though, it is brilliant, if ... -
Roman Consuls Don't Look So Bad
By common consensus, 2013 was one of the worst years for American politics in recent memory, though it certainly got strong competition from 1998 and 1974, to list a few others. The palpable tension over what this year will bring, be it Obamacare, ...