Ethan Epstein

Is it terrorism? It depends.

It’s a synecdoche—and a dramatic one—for the biggest issue in global politics.

Can Rhode Island’s tax-cutting governor win another three-way race?

He denied that there were Nazi-operated gas chambers and received an award from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He built the first one in 2009. Now there are 75,000 of them.

The bankruptcy of the original everything store tells us a lot about where America is going.

"Abolish ICE" appears to have abolished David Garcia’s campaign.

More than event planning?

It did in Alabama. It might in New Jersey.

A surprisingly competitive Senate race in New Jersey.

Bernie Taupin’s lyrics make him whole.

That means you, Marco Rubio.

What to expect from Tuesday's summit between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in.

Message to Moon.

Beijing’s nefarious activities in the United States are very worrying.

Yes—but not for the reasons you might think.

Ethan Epstein on imagining nuclear war with North Korea.

Jan Brewer would be an interesting choice for the Arizona Senate seat.

Will the last country to recognize the country turn out the lights?

A town in decline faces another blow.

The trip would likely coincide with the holiday marking the establishment of North Korea.

Few American liberals strike the same balance.

The hometown briefing.

“Urban-rural splits have become the great global divider,” the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman writes in an interesting column Tuesday. Rachman notes that’s an old story in countries like the United States and Britain, where everyone knows that that rural conservatives do battle with urban liberals…

It has nothing to do with his tweets.

He's running.

The first president without the ability to code-switch.

What does AT&T want to do to HBO?

The coffee giant is ditching plastic straws— for the right reason.

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

Rule of law or family values?

After the "successful" Singapore summit, China appears to be relieving pressure on Kim Jong-un.

A volcanic island in South Korea has become a hotbed of the migration crisis.

The outcome of the Kim-Trump summit was never in doubt.

How do people make sense of confusing events in the present? By casting about for precedents—metaphors—from the past.

The idea that the ubiquitous chain is a bastion of liberal elitism is laughable.

Meet Kim Yong-chol.

Pink is keeping the dying genre alive.

He predicted the moment in which we find ourselves.

Testing, testing.

Carrots, sticks, and fashion diktats.

The ‘Chit Chat Live’ tour is light on politics and heavy on nostalgia.

Or, Pyongyang, or Beijing, or Ulan Bataar…

Credible sources suggest that he has.

“Birtherism”—the ugly term for the even uglier charge that Barack Obama was not born in the United States—always suffered from one fatal flaw: a birth announcement that appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser on August 13, 1961, declaring the arrival of young Barack.

Cumulus Media, the third largest terrestrial radio chain in the country, is bankrupt, and it’s making some drastic moves. Earlier this spring, it dropped Don Imus, the legendary—if now fossilized—morning host. And now there are rumors that Cumulus is looking to cut Michael Savage, one of talk…

It’s almost as if a tight labor supply helps workers.

A leading Hungarian journalist discusses the mechanics of Viktor Orban's "illiberal democracy."

Seattle

In 2001, Australia's governing coalition, led by John Howard's Liberal party (who are, in fact, the country's conservative party) looked set to lose its majority. The opposition, led by the Labor party, had been leading in the polls for most of the year.

Mao Zedong characterized the relationship between China and North Korea as that of "lips and teeth." His point was that the lips provide a buffer to the teeth: Without them, China would be dangerously exposed. Despite the occasional toothache, that relationship has endured. China is North Korea's…

Kim Jong-un cut a cosmopolitan figure as a youth—Swiss finishing schools, trips abroad with his dictator dad—but he's turned reclusive as he's ruled North Korea. Indeed, he hasn't departed his country once since assuming the throne.

Talk about a Friday news dump: Chopsticks III, the “How Can Be Lounge,” a Portland, Oregon, karaoke institution will close this weekend, it was announced on Friday. (“How can be” was not a Mickey Rooneyism circa Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but a phrase uttered by proprietor David Chow.) It’s another…

The Hillary Unplugged tour made it to India this week, where the former presidential candidate modified her theory as to why she lost the 2016 election. This time, it wasn’t James Comey, or even “the Russians" that did her in. In fact, it was the Americans. Here is what she said:

There are three questions worth considering about the planned meeting:

August Snow was one of last year’s sleeper hits—and deservedly so. The beautifully written, fast-paced thriller gave readers a tour of Detroit and its suburbs, and introduced them to a charming new literary hero: the half-black, half-Mexican lead character, the eponymous Mr. Snow.

Stein’s Law—named for the late economist Herbert Stein, who was chair of Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers—goes something like this: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” (His son Ben Stein’s law, by contrast, is probably this.) It’s one of the few pithy economic phrases…

Nikolas Cruz delighted in torturing animals. The Florida school shooter is reported to have killed frogs and squirrels, and sicced a dog on a neighbor’s piglets. Cruz’s social media feeds were replete with images of dead and maimed critters, apparently hurt by his own hand.

It’s relatively common for terror organizations to claim credit for atrocities that they actually had no part in. When a casino was targeted for an arson attack on the Philippines last year, for example, ISIS claimed the “credit.” (The word, in fact, should be “blame.”) Yet it later emerged that…

Speaking in Japan a couple of days before the Pyeongchang Olympics began, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a welcome message: “We will not allow North Korean propaganda to hijack the message and imagery of the Olympic Games,” he said. Unfortunately, Pence was not doing double duty as an…

America doesn’t need “more philosophers” Sen. Marco Rubio said in a 2015 presidential debate, echoing politicians on both sides of the aisle who have, unfortunately, derided education in the humanities.

In the course of what CNN informed its viewers and readers was a gold-medal-winning diplomatic performance, Kim Yo-jong, the U.S.-sanctioned sister of Kim Jong-un, signed a guest book belonging to South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in. “I hope Pyongyang and Seoul get closer in our people's hearts and…

It’s likely that only the most hardcore Vogue readers remember it—and presumably Anna Wintour and company are hoping that even they will one day forget it—but back in 2011, the venerable fashion magazine posted a glowing profile of Asma al-Assad. Yes, that Asma al-Assad: the wife of the Syrian…

At this point the Pyeongchang Olympics really should be re-christened the Pyongyang Olympics. What should have been a celebration of South Korea's titanic cultural, economic, and political achievements is degenerating into an event that will instead normalize the barbarous North Korean regime that…

Dick Durbin would like to have a word with the professoriate. It seems that the phrase “chain migration”—a technical term used for decades by university-based demographers to describe family-based migration patterns—is in fact racist. The Illinois senator suggested as much last month, after…

The Washington, D.C., metro area’s beleaguered public transit system (known as WMATA) trumpeted good news this week: “Crime on Metro in 2017 plunged to its lowest level in a more than decade,” stated a press release. “Last year, there were a total of 1,282 Part I crimes on Metro, a 19 percent…

Before there was MERYL STREEP! there was Meryl Streep: a sensitive, subtle actor who gave terrific performances in movies like Sophie’s Choice, A Cry in the Dark, and the Bridges of Madison County. But some time around the turn of the century, it became impossible to see her name in anything but…

NBC’s Lester Holt, on assignment in North Korea, is offering his viewers that most unusual of treats: a “rare look” inside the famously reclusive country. In fact, so rare was Holt’s visit to a Potemkin ski resort outside of Pyongyang—it has, after all, been visited previously only by the likes of…

At first, it seemed like a joke. Because the name of the South Korean city where the Olympics will occur in February—Pyeongchang—sounds so much like the North Korean capital—Pyongyang—many joked that scores of spectators would accidentally turn up in North Korea expecting the Olympics, only to be…

About a year ago, just as Donald Trump was waiting be inaugurated, two twentieth century novels skyrocketed up the bestseller list. One was George Orwell’s 1984, which topped Amazon’s sales rankings that week. The other was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which repeated the feat two weeks…

There is a specter haunting American popular culture: the specter of Donald Trump.

A miracle on ice? The two Koreas have announced that they will field a joint women’s hockey team at next month’s Olympics in Pyeongchang. The two countries will march in together under one flag, though will only complete as a team in women’s hockey. Still, it will be the first time the Koreas have…

Him too. Back in the halcyon days of 2009 it was revealed that David Letterman had engaged in deeply inappropriate workplace behavior. The late night host had multiple affairs with women who worked under him, including an intern who was then just a college student.

We all know by now that retweets do not equal endorsements. But it’s apparently time for a reminder that an actor’s performance does not equal an endorsement of the character he or she is playing either.

Presumptive 2020 Democratic front-runner Oprah Winfrey is responsible for unleashing any number of ills on the world: Dr. Phil; James Frey; The Butler. But give her credit for this: In the aggressively philistine world of reality television, Winfrey has been a lone voice stressing the importance of…

Everybody agrees that it’s bad that North Korea is a nuclear state. It’s “unacceptable” as the president put it (although the world has already basically accepted it). But rarely considered is why North Korea went nuclear.

We are living in the age of the retread. From Beauty and the Beast to Baywatch, 2017 saw a Hollywood bereft of ideas and artistic courage rehashing—er, sorry, “rebooting”—long-since retired films and franchises.

On December 18, a Twitter user with a large following tweeted out a conspiracy theory: The charges against Senator Al Franken, that he had groped numerous women over several years, were “likely a Roger Stone / FOX set up job.” Three days later, the user added a sensational twist: “I didn’t accuse…

There are good arguments and bad arguments, valid arguments and invalid arguments. And then, in another category, there are sadistic arguments. Unfortunately, we’ve witnessed a few of those this week on the subject of tax reform.

Surprise! North Korea has rejected Rex Tillerson’s request for unconditional talks with the United States.

There’s a specter haunting Donald Trump’s presidency: the specter of powerlessness.

Die Hard is a Christmas movie. We know this because the American Film Institute’s Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland—honestly, one of the great cultural institutions of the Washington area—screens it as part of its Holiday Classics series each December. (Though I would argue that Die Hard II…

The adjectives “Orwellian” and “Kafkaesque” (but, curiously, never Orwellesque or Kafkian) are some of the most overused and abused in the English language. They’re oft employed, one suspects, by those with hazy memories of paging through the Cliffs Notes of 1984 or The Hunger Artist a couple of…

What happened to Trumpism? Sure, we still get the oh-so-Trumpy tweets, but many of the issues that Donald Trump ran on have been cast to the wayside in the 11 months (it hasn’t even been a year yet!?) of his presidency.

A foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, as the poet had it, but a flailing inconsistency isn’t a particularly good look either.

Over the past couple of years, a succession of American tech executives have decamped to Beijing to pander to the dictatorial leadership there. Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, has shown a penchant for flattering the ruling caste in China; he has repeatedly visited the country that his company,…

Because it looks increasingly and unfortunately likely that we’re going to have to hear the phrase “Senator Roy Moore” before too long, journalists have moved on to the next question: Will the U.S. Senate make good on its threats, and perhaps refuse to seat the twice-booted judge, who has been…

Alas, if recent polls are right, Roy Moore is likely to win his Senate race in Alabama. That means we’ll have to spend at least the next two years doing something that fills me with abject dread: hearing the name "Roy Moore."

As the Trump administration seeks to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power, it will probably want to close the barn door as well, now that the horse has gotten out.

The New York Times published a subtly frightening article over the weekend. The piece is a profile of a 29 year old Ohio man who is perhaps most notable for his very banality. He dines at Panera and Applebee’s. He plays video games and likes Seinfeld. Just married, his wedding registry was at…

Google honcho Eric Schmidt has announced that his ubiquitous search engine will move to “de-rank” RT and Sputnik, two Kremlin-owned news sites. At an event in Canada over the weekend, Schmidt accused RT—a television network and website—and Sputnik—an online news service and radio station—of…

The would-be Dian Fosseys who have built a cottage industry of issuing pronouncements about the Millennials In The Mist have suffered yet another blow. For the better part of a decade, these generational gurus have been prattling on about how those of us born, roughly, between 1980 and 1995, don’t…

Washington’s beleaguered public transit agency, WMATA, has curtailed service and hiked fares significantly in recent years. (Oh, and it has also killed somebody.) It has recently declared that it needs another $30 million cash infusion from the jurisdictions that subsidize it to stay afloat.

Former New Republic editor Peter Beinart has an exquisite, anguished, self-flagellating meditation at the Atlantic’s website Tuesday. Beinart, a white, Yale-educated man, has come to the realization that he benefited from a certain kind of affirmative action in his New Republic days. “White men…

I used to despise the relative obscurity of my alma mater, Reed College. The name of the Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school has spurred more than a few quizzical looks in Washington when I’ve mentioned it. “Reed? Where’s that?” This has been a persistent source of chagrin and insecurity about my…

In the mid 1950s, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev initiated the process of “De-Stalinization.” Much of this was political: Khrushchev liberalized the Stalinist political system (without, alas, dismantling it) and freed many gulag prisoners. But a big part of De-Stalinization was purely aesthetic.…

Noting the universally negative coverage that he garners from the national media, Donald Trump recently declared that he loves “regional media.” At this point, he probably loves South Korean media as well.

Violence is endemic to American life. We know this because people are largely inured to it, at least when it happens to other people.

Toothpaste, a 7,000-year-old product, is rarely a leading indicator. But the world’s top purveyor of the stuff—along with laundry detergent, dish soap, diapers, and other sundries—made a decision earlier this year that could portend a big shift in the advertising industry.

I guess it’s not altogether surprising, given that the most famous political figure to emerge from Rhode Island in modern political history was the notoriously corrupt (and violent) Buddy Cianci, the long-time mayor of the city that I grew up in. But as a member in good standing of the Rhode Island…

Hong Jun-pyo may be diminutive in stature, but he visited Washington this week with a tall order. The prominent South Korean politician—he finished in second in this year’s presidential election, and currently leads the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party—wants U.S. nukes. And he wants them…

Have there ever been unlikelier rock stars than Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the duo behind Steely Dan? The unabashedly intellectual Bard College grads—in high school, they were probably the bookish kids dressed in black, smoking cigarettes behind the gym—have certainly never looked the part:…

One of the more surprising revelations about Russia’s reported meddling in the 2016 election is that its government supported objectively anti-Donald Trump, left wing causes. First we learned that the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked organization, bought social media advertisements that…

Signs of China’s economic strength abound: from the increasing number of Hollywood movies that are designed to pander to Chinese tastes to the political class’s silence in the face of Chinese cyber-aggression. Consider the non-reaction to Beijing’s stunning plundering of OPM personnel data compared…

The late North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il had thousands of Hollywood movies in his personal collection, furnishing him with what he thought was a deep knowledge of a country he would never see. He was particularly fond, reportedly, of The Godfather—so much so that he ran his country like a Mafioso.…

Donald Trump may have played golf with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe earlier this year, but when Chinese president Xi Jinping made his own visit to Mar-a-Lago, a visit to the links was decidedly not on the agenda.

The late North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il had thousands of Hollywood movies in his personal collection, furnishing him with what he thought was a deep knowledge of a country he would never see. He was particularly fond, reportedly, of The Godfather—so much so that he ran his country like a Mafioso.…

North Korea’s inexorable march toward nuclear weapons has been treated as something akin to a malign meteorological phenomenon. Sure, it’s bad. But there’s also nothing we can do to stop it, the standard line has gone. After all, by the time Barack Obama took office, the “heavily isolated” country…

The cry has gone out: If only Las Vegas murderer Stephen Paddock—instead of being a nihilistic scumbag who wasted his golden years in windowless casinos—had been an Islamic extremist, even the most intransigent of Republicans would be backing gun control measures now. Piers Morgan said as such;…

For months we’ve been hearing that the Russian government meddled in last year’s presidential election to aid the candidacy of Donald Trump. And now news has emerged that part of that dastardly campaign was supporting ... Black Lives Matter?

Few if any Americans are associated with more apocryphal quotes than Thomas Jefferson, but the false notion that he said, “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” is among the easiest to dispel. Because Jefferson never would have said something so idiotic. Of course dissent can be patriotic, but…

Communism had some good parts, and the New York Times is on it.

President Trump tweeted the following about North Korea on Sunday morning:

Long before I ever even picked up a golf club, I wanted to be the kind of person who golfed regularly. A Real Golfer, in other words. Even as a child, I loved the manicured, tightly controlled aesthetic of golf courses—​just the right (which is to say, minimal) amount of “nature” for my…

Long before I ever even picked up a golf club, I wanted to be the kind of person who golfed regularly. A Real Golfer, in other words. Even as a child, I loved the manicured, tightly controlled aesthetic of golf courses—​just the right (which is to say, minimal) amount of “nature” for my…

Many Americans, particularly on the right, have comforted themselves with the notion that fears of an oncoming Chinese century are overblown. Per capita incomes in China remain well below those in the capitalist West, and the country’s arguably irresponsible stimulus policies have led to a…

A vote is expected Monday evening on a new round of U.N. sanctions against North Korea. Unfortunately, in a bid to win Russian and Chinese support for the resolution, the measures proposed by the United States have been watered down. Removed has been what would be one the most useful tools in…

Donald Trump’s remarks following the killing of a young paralegal by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Virginia, generated widespread opprobrium—and no one was more cutting than many of the president’s fellow Republicans. Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio were just a few among the…

Donald Trump’s remarks following the killing of a young paralegal by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Virginia, generated widespread opprobrium—and no one was more cutting than many of the president’s fellow Republicans. Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio were just a few among the…

Herewith a few subjects pertaining to North Korea that have all but vanished from public discourse: the country’s gulag (thought to hold upwards of 200,000 political prisoners); chronic malnutrition in the countryside while a ruthless dictator grows morbidly obese; and intensified efforts to…

I’m a Guam hipster: I knew about it before it was cool. In fact, back in the halcyon days of June 2017 I was invited to the U.S. territory by a local business group. In those innocent times, the biggest safety risk seemed to be brown tree snakes: The Pacific island is utterly dominated by the…

As well, Donald Trump can tell you, New York theater is one tough business. Even the most critically acclaimed shows can struggle to make a buck. Just this year, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat lasted barely 100 performances on the Great White Way. (Though in that case, the market was…

Millennials are responsible for more killings than Jeffrey Dahmer. At this point, my generation—those us born, roughly, between the 1982 and the year 2000—have been accused of killing dinner dates, golf, napkins, running, and Applebees. (OK, that last one is justifiable homicide.)

The King and I is on borrowed time. The 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical—a staple of the stage since debut—feels downright subversive in 2017.

Liu Xiaobo’s deeply depressing death coincides with the long, slow demise of the cause he so bravely championed: Chinese liberalism.

Among the industrialized nations, Japan has been notably resistant to immigration. Only 2.3 million foreigners reside in the country of 126 million—less than 2 percent of the total population. (By contrast, about 13 percent of U.S. residents are thought to be foreign-born.) And in Japan, the vast…

The response was typical Trumpism—with a soupçon of Mean Girls. Just as he had called jihadists “losers” a few weeks prior, the president reacted to North Korea’s test launch of a midrange ballistic missile on July 3 with a gibe that cut to the quick. “Does [Kim Jong-un] have anything better to do…

The increasing repression being visited upon Hong Kong by Beijing is well documented. The Chinese regime is muddling in the city’s politics, which are supposed to be off limits. Beijing has also kidnapped several people from Hong Kong, even though the Chinese police legally have no jurisdiction…

James Clapper has this right: An "alternative approach" to North Korea is needed. The former director of national intelligence made the claim in Seoul this week at a seminar hosted by the Joongang Ilbo (a major South Korean newspaper) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Hagatna, Guam

When you travel to a country like France, Spain, or South Korea, you notice something about the lifestyles of the professional classes there: Unlike in America, they still smoke cigarettes. The U.S.'s lawyers, professors, and bankers, meanwhile, long ago gave up the devil's weed.

Donald Trump's tweets offer a window into his mind; they tell us, in real time, what occupies his consciousness (at least between the hours of 5 and 9 a.m., generally). But often more revealing than what the president does tweet is what he doesn't tweet.

Margaret Chan was quite taken by what she saw on her visit to Pyongyang in 2010. North Koreans had "something which most other developing countries would envy," she noted: a first-rate medical system with plenty of doctors and nurses. Not only that, there were no obesity problems, she enthused,…

The impulse to do something after a horrific event is universal, and perhaps even more pronounced in politicians than typical civilians. And so, in the wake of the horrific murder of two commuters on a Portland, Oregon, light rail over the weekend, it's not entirely surprising to see that city's…

It's been a banner week for the World Health Organization (WHO), the lavishly funded global health agency that somehow botched the biggest health crisis in years back in 2014, when it failed to respond to the Ebola crisis that was then ravaging west Africa. (Oh, and the AP reported this week that…

It's the quintessential Churchillian remark—particularly in the sense that there's no evidence that Winston Churchill ever actually said it: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've exhausted all other options." But perhaps the adage should be updated to this: You…

China may only be implementing sanctions against North Korea in fits and starts, but it has shown no trouble sanctioning its democratic neighbors, South Korea and Taiwan. South Korea, for the "crime" of trying to protect itself from North Korean missiles—Beijing loathes the THAAD missile defense…

In the end, self-interest defeated collective interest. The South Korean presidential election, which concluded Tuesday, featured one strong left-wing candidate, Moon Jae-in, and three credible centrist-to-conservative contenders. (Notably, all three of the center-right candidates professed hard…

In the end, self-interest defeated collective interest. The South Korean presidential election, which concluded Tuesday, featured one strong left-wing candidate, Moon Jae-in, and three credible centrist-to-conservative contenders. (Notably, all three of the center-right candidates professed hard…

North Korea is a notoriously difficult country to escape from, not only because of the physical barriers the country erects along its northern border, but because of a sickening form of hostage-taking: High-ranking officials are not allowed to bring their whole families on overseas postings. That…

Despite decades of public campaigning, steady increases in penalties, and even the advent of ride-sharing apps, some 10,000 Americans are killed each year by drunk drivers. These are preventable deaths, each one an outrage and a tragedy. The Washington Post, for its part, has therefore…

Regrets—we've all had a few. L'esprit de l'escalier—that wonderful line coming to mind a moment too late—is a common annoyance after failed dates and dud job interviews; dented fenders and bum shoulders attest to avoidable failures of depth perception and misjudged forays into backyard football…

It's almost as if Donald Trump "looked into Xi Jinping's soul" when the Chinese president visited Mar-a-Lago a few weeks ago. What else can explain the U.S. president's bizarre affinity for the repressive Chinese dictator, which he laid out in a disturbing interview with Reuters on Thursday?

Regrets—we've all had a few. L'esprit de l'escalier—that wonderful line coming to mind a moment too late—is a common annoyance after failed dates and dud job interviews; dented fenders and bum shoulders attest to avoidable failures of depth perception and misjudged forays into backyard football…

The notices are in, and they're brutal. Donald Trump's nascent North Korea policy—announcing the end of "strategic patience" (Barack Obama's code for sitting around and doing nothing about the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons), leaning on China to rein in Pyongyang, strengthening sanctions, and…

It must have seemed like a problem from hell: When Samantha Power served as Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, she tirelessly highlighted the depredations of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, publicizing his various barbarities—his indiscriminate killing of civilians, his use of…

The innocuous-sounding Global Times is basically the id of the Chinese Communist party. A stridently nationalist tabloid newspaper with a flair for Breitbartian excess, the CCP-owned Times has, in recent weeks alone, referred to Australia as an "offshore prison," warned of a "large-sale war" should…

For a whole host of reasons explained in my story in the current issue of the THE WEEKLY STANDARD, South Korea is likely to elect a left-wing president on May 9. This near certainty, however, has had the benefit of clarifying things: The race's most conservative candidate, Hong Jun-pyo, has just…

Seoul

Seoul

Seoul

The Washington Post editorial board picked the wrong day to call Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "silent." Speaking in Seoul Friday, the newly minted diplomat delivered a loud message.

For roughly two decades, the United States enjoyed a marked decline in its crime rates. Burglaries, murders, other violent crimes—they all fell steadily. That promising age ended as 2014 gave way to 2015. For the past two years, crime has been rising. And alarmingly, it is violent…

For roughly two decades, the United States enjoyed a marked decline in its crime rates. Burglaries, murders, other violent crimes—they all fell steadily. That promising age ended as 2014 gave way to 2015. For the past two years, crime has been rising. And alarmingly, it is violent…

Donald Trump is undeniably a skilled salesman—his powers of persuasion are a big part of how he got to the White House. Yet despite being a bestselling author himself, the president is not much of a bookseller. Friday morning, the writer Nick Adams received what you might expect to be pretty much…

Since 2009, each edition of the State Department's annual Country Reports on Terrorism has contained a cheerful fiction: State has given the nation that it insists on calling the "DPRK"—using the anti-democratic, anti-people, and anti-republican Pyongyang government's laughable official…

Since 2009, each edition of the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism has contained a cheerful fiction: State has given the nation that it insists on calling the "DPRK"—using the anti-democratic, anti-people, and anti-republican Pyongyang government's laughable official…

North Korea's apparent assassination of Kim Jong-un's exiled half-brother Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur's airport was many things: A hideously cruel act; a brazen act of international terrorism; and another sign of the paranoia of the young North Korean dictator.

It was North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un who ordered the killing of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur's airport earlier this week. That's according to South Korea's intelligence chief, who also said that the assassination had been a "standing order" for some five years. Malaysian…

At one point, Kim Jong-nam was slated to succeed his father Kim Jong-il as North Korea's leader. Then there was that unfortunate incident at Narita Airport outside Tokyo—Kim was detained there in 2001 for travelling with a fake Dominican passport.

Donald Trump was flayed Friday morning for allegedly misreading a New York Times article. Trump tweeted that the "failing" NYT published "fake news" when it wrote that Chinese president Xi Jinping "has not spoken to Mr. Trump since November 14." Yet, as the president pointed out, this isn't true:…

Dan Mogulof, a vice chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, must boast X-ray vision. After about 150 people rampaged through his picturesque campus in early February, setting fires, smashing windows, and launching fireworks at the police—all ostensibly to protest an appearance by an…

It might be surprising to learn that Stalinist North Korea actually has a private university. But it's true: Since 2010, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), which is funded largely by western donors, has been educating many sons of the country's political elite.

A report in a Mexican newspaper earlier this month suggested that, as part of a mooted NAFTA re-negotiation, the Trump administration may offer to help Mexico bulk up border security along its southern frontier with Guatemala.

Donald Trump, apparently sad! at having lost the popular vote in his race against Hillary Clinton, has announced on—where else?—Twitter, "a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal, and even those registered to vote who are dead."…

Let's start with the big stuff: As the pioneering judge Michael Kirby demonstrated in his landmark Commission of Inquiry, the North Korean government commits "systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights," through its use of prison camps, torture, and enforced disappearances, among…

The Gideon Bible it isn't. At a chain of mid-tier hotels in Japan—roughly equivalent to the Holiday Inn—guests are treated to another form of bedtime reading. Each room includes a book, penned by the chain's founder and CEO, that claims, among other things, that the Nanjing Massacre was "fabricated…

And they worried he wouldn’t be bipartisan! Last week, President-elect Donald Trump met with that scion of America's premier Democratic dynasty, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The confab, which reportedly occurred at Trump's request, centered on the issue of childhood vaccines and their (nonexistent)…

In late December 2015, Japan and South Korea reached an agreement regarding Korean sex slaves taken during World War II—the thousands upon thousands of rape victims whom the Japanese imperial forces euphemistically referred to as "comfort women." After decades of denial, obfuscation, and…

The New York Times style guide must make for interesting reading. Surely, there's an admonishment somewhere near the top: Insert into any article, no matter how unrelated to the president-elect, a slam on Donald Trump. And if you can dress it up as a "fact check," all the better.

Far be it for me to mock another publication's typos. But this screamer from Thursday's Express, a free daily tabloid put out for the Washington Post for subway commuters, deserves some kind of recognition. Here it is:

Stop if you've heard this one before: A prominent Democrat has been found to have used a private email account to conduct public business. This time it was Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who agreed to release 2,700 pages of heretofore unreleased emails on Wednesday. The Chicago Tribune notes that…

Donald Trump is poised to shake up many policies, foreign, domestic—and, well, literally domestic—but on one issue he looks set to stick with President Obama's approach: North Korea. Joseph Yun, a State Department envoy on North Korea policy, confirmed to reporters in Seoul the other day that he…

Andy Puzder, Donald Trump's nominee for Labor Secretary, is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which operates Hardee's and Carl's Jr. When attempting to foist his garbage food on the public, Puzder's company has often employed racy—if not outright sexist—advertising. (Here's an example.)

Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait for a phone call. That's how it must have felt to the Taiwanese people when their president, Tsai Ing-wen, had a 10-minute talk with Donald Trump on December 2—the first direct conversation between a Taiwanese leader and a U.S. president or president-elect…

Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait for a phone call. That’s how it must have felt to the Taiwanese people when their president, Tsai Ing-wen, had a 10-minute talk with Donald Trump on December 2—the first direct conversation between a Taiwanese leader and a U.S. president or president-elect…

2016 had been a tough year for Taiwan, the jewel of an island nation that China views as an illegitimate breakaway province. In January, it elected a new president–a progressive female law professor who takes a decidedly dim view of the Communist tyranny a few hundred miles from Taiwan's shores.…

Helene Cooper, a New York Times journalist, says we should avoid taking an "American-centric" view of Fidel Castro's regime. She has a point: Ideally, we would take a Cuban-centric view of his rule, given that it was the Cubans themselves who either suffered or prospered under Castro's rule. And on…

Montreal

State-run North Korean media—the only kind there is in that Stalinist country—often make hay of bad news out of the South. When a ferry sank off of South Korea in 2014, killing 300, for example, it drew attention to shoddy rescue efforts. And now with Seoul in the midst of a bona fide political…

In the state of Oregon, the secretary of state is charged with auditing public accounts, managing elections, and administering public records. It's a glorified administrative role, which for whatever reason is an elected office in the Pacific Northwestern state.

Opponents of the death penalty have made a serious tactical error. Rather than stress what is by far their strongest argument—the partially persuasive claim that the government should not, ethically, be in the business of killing people—they have instead stressed the "cost" of executions. The fact,…

An infographic on the front page of Tuesday's Financial Times informs us that "just 3 percent of [Trump or Clinton] voters expect their spouse or partner" will vote for a different presidential candidate than they will.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas

It is, as my sister put, the epitome of #BarringtonProblems. In Barrington, Rhode Island, a ritzy suburb of Providence, a letter to the editor chastising women who wear yoga pants has spurred mass protests.

Perhaps he just wants to take David Carr's old media criticism job at the New York Times when his term is up. (Sorry, Jim Rutenberg!) But whatever his motivations, it's become increasingly clear that Barack Obama enjoys nothing so much as playing media critic.

Las Vegas

Roger Waters—predictably—got there first. The uncomfortably dumb former Pink Floyd singer took a break from his usual anti-Semitic antics last weekend to instead lay into Donald Trump. Closing out the Desert Trip festival in Indio, California, on Sunday night, Surrey-born Waters branded the…

Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen's National Day address—Monday marks the 105th birthday of the Republic of China—was remarkable in the issues that it foregrounded. What was notable, in fact, was how utterly quotidian Taiwan's first female leader's remarks were. The large majority of the recently…

As doubts have grown over the accuracy of polling, many have argued that there's a better gauge for predicting electoral outcomes: betting markets. The idea is that the wisdom of crowds—especially when those crowds are putting their money where their mouths are—trumps surveys that are hobbled by…

RETRACTION: The following post was based on an erroneous news report from KING 5 television. Arcen Cetin is in fact a United States citizen.

It may seem like a minor, technical issue, but it became clear to me on a visit to Taipei earlier this month that the Taiwanese government was furious that it might be blocked from even observing the triennial meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which is just getting…

Taibo City, Taiwan

It's well known that China, despite its increasing annoyance with Kim Jong-un, does not want the North Korean regime to collapse. Beijing has its own geopolitical—if utterly amoral—reasons for holding this position, primarily that it fears a united Korea with a U.S. military presence. More…

When Donald Trump has occasionally alluded to America's rising crime rates, Democratic partisans and the media elite—but I repeat myself!—have torched the Republican nominee. Crime is at historic lows, they cry. We know they're really serious, because they even brandish charts—though, curiously,…

Taibo City, Taiwan

Jorge Castañeda, the esteemed Mexican intellectual who served as his country's secretary of foreign affairs from 2000 to 2003, used a Wednesday appearance in Washington not only to declare that Donald Trump could easily make Mexico pay for a border wall, and to refute recent studies showing a…

Jorge Castañeda, who served as Mexico's secretary of foreign affairs from 2000 to 2003, and who is currently a professor at New York University, appeared at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Wednesday. Castañeda, who cuts a debonair, cosmopolitan figure, exploded a couple of bits of received…

Hillary Clinton gave a speech Monday addressed to, well, me. In Philadelphia, the Democratic candidate for president delivered an address aimed explicitly at "millennials"—those of us born, roughly, between 1982 and 1998. (Like all bogus pseudoscientific categories, who exactly constitutes a…

An article in Sunday's Washington Post takes a look at mooted plans to expand the D.C. Streetcar's route network. For the fortunately uninitiated, the D.C. Streetcar is a 2.2 mile form of "transportation" that 1) is slower than walking 2) cost upwards of $200 million to construct and was years late…

Observers of the Clintons have often noted that they shade the truth even when a) there's no possible benefit they could derive from a particular bit of dishonesty, or b) their falsehoods are easily disproven. Hillary Clinton's famous tale of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire (refuted by, yes,…

When awful floods inundated large swaths of Louisiana last month, thousands of Americans volunteered to travel to the southern state to aid in recovery efforts. Now that terrible flooding has inundated parts of North Korea, meanwhile, Kim Jong-un's regime is "deploying" 100,000 residents to the…

A group of lawmakers from South Korea's Saenuri party—the conservative-leaning party that President Park Geun-hye belongs to—has called for what even a few of years ago was an idea safely relegated to the fringes of Korean political discourse: for Seoul to pursue its own nuclear weapons program.…

To some, it might read like one of those "too-weird-and horrible-to-be-true stories" about North Korea—remember the myth that Kim Jong-un had his uncle mauled to death by a pack of hungry dogs? (That's not to say that Kim will be winning any nephew of year awards anytime soon: He "merely" had his…

Powell's Books, which bills itself as the world's largest independent bookstore, is a Portland, Oregon, institution. (Though I've always been more partial to nearby Cameron's.) Its popularity among Portlanders ranks up there with bikes and beer. But now Powell's finds itself in direct conflict with…

As the ride-hailing outfit Uber has continued its assault on the established taxi industry—oftentimes with dubious legality—the company's CEO, Travis Kalanick, has often repaired to an essentially humanitarian argument to make his case for the company. Specifically, Kalanick says that Uber is great…

It's a truth universally acknowledged that laws requiring voters to show some form of identification have only one purpose: to suppress minority turnout and help the Republican party. The official line, after all, is that there has…

Mexico has a serious obesity problem, with seventy percent of adults and thirty percent of children overweight or obese. Indeed, Mexico recently surpassed the United States to become the fattest major country in the world. We don't win anymore!

They're having a close-out sale at the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times reports:

Steven Rattner, a New York Times columnist who was also the Obama administration's "auto czar," has a piece out Thursday morning defending the auto bailout. This being the New York Times, the piece can't just make an argument about the bailout: It also has to serve as a rebuke of Donald Trump. And…

So there is a reason for countries to host North Korean embassies after all. Sure, rather than the spade work of actual diplomacy, North Korea's "diplomats" use their embassies to export counterfeit cash, go on illegal shopping sprees for their leader, and issue terrifying threats against…

Police were called to a meeting of the Multnomah County, Oregon, Democrats late last week. According to the Oregonian, a "scuffle" broke out when a handful of Bernie Sanders supporters, led by one Leigh LaFleur (a prominent Wiccan supporter of the Vermont senator) disrupted the meeting by shouting.…

In an economic address delivered in Michigan this week, Hillary Clinton tore into Donald Trump. No surprise there, of course. But what is notable is precisely what Clinton excoriated her Republican opponent for: Per Hillary, Trump is just too darn negative about the current state of the country.

Given Donald Trump's penchant for bashing all thing China—or even his obvious relish in enunciating the country's name—one might expect Beijing to worry about the prospect of the real estate mogul rising to the presidency. And yet, there are also reasons to believe that China would welcome a Trump…

An anti-Donald Trump super PAC is filing an immigration complaint against Melania Trump. According to a press release sent out Monday morning:

At a fraught time—with Beijing blundering through the South China Sea, despite a Hague panel smacking down its bogus territorial claims, and North Korea firing ballistic missiles into Japanese waters, for example—it might behoove Japan to embrace a more conciliatory stance towards the other great…

If Bill Clinton truly did fall asleep during his wife's speech at the Democratic convention on Thursday night, you can hardly blame him. And that's not (only) because of the soporific content of the remarks. Rather, Clinton's speech went late into the night, not wrapping up until around midnight,…

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

What happens when a major global power—one that will soon boast the world's largest economy to boot—refuses to accept legally "binding" arbitration decisions? We're about to find out.

Evidently Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't like that her colleague Sonia Sotomayor has recently surged past her to become the most popular Supreme Court justice among denizens of the Internet left. Justice Ginsburg granted an interview to the New York Times over the weekend seemingly designed to shore…

A rule of thumb for researchers: If you create a super-smart algorithm to determine, say, the best movie of 2015, and you come back with Mortdecai, that might be a sign that there's something wrong with your research methods—not that the American people inexplicably failed to appreciate the genius…

Four Dallas police officers and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer have been killed in what the Dallas Morning News called a "coordinated attack during [a] demonstration against recent shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota." Altogether, 11 officers and one bystander were…

It's chang ma in Korea right now—monsoon season. Every summer, torrential rain clouds park over the Korean peninsula for about month, rendering huddling indoors with soju and some dried anju even more enticing than usual.

After news of ISIS's last atrocity broke over the weekend—this time, the terror group slaughtered some 150 Iraqis, including scores of children, who happened to be out celebrating the end of Ramadan—State Department spokesman John Kirby weighed in on the matter.

From the Foundation for Constitutional Government:

My phone buzzed with a "news alert" from the New York Times Friday morning. Normally, these alerts are reserved for truly breaking, earth-shattering news, like the rise of "man buns" in Brooklyn.

The relationship between motorists and bicyclists in major American cities is, er, "complicated," as the euphemism has it. Most U.S. cities lack any real bike infrastructure—think distinct, separated lanes, like in Amsterdam and Copenhagen—which means that cars and cyclists are forced in most cases…

Sunday's Washington Post contained a book review of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, Ph.D. (A good rule of thumb: Be wary of authors who broadcast their academic achievements on the cover of their books.) The review, by Pamela Newkirk, included the following…

Following the "Brexit" versus "Bremain" debate from afar (and by the way, now that the referendum is finally over, can we please retire those hideous portmanteaus?), one got the sense that the two opposing camps were arguing on entirely different grounds. They weren't so much debating as making two…

It would be irresponsible to speculate as to whether Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had grown envious of her colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Internet celebrity. (The octogenarian Ginsburg was been widely feted as the "Notorious RBG," and there's even a popular line of t-shirts that sports…

Given the hyper-partisan era in which we live, one would expect a Democrat to cheer when the presumptive Republican nominee for president appeared open to legislation she was championing.

A surprise fifteen hour filibuster led by Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy has apparently proven successful. Politico reports:

Hillary Clinton clobbered Bernie Sanders in the District of Columbia's presidential primary on Tuesday. The former secretary of state took 79 percent of the vote to Sanders's 20 percent.

You've got to hand it to Alejandro Cao de Benos. While most Western apologists for North Korea obscure their sympathies with platitudes about wanting to "promote dialogue" or foster "cultural exchange," de Benos, a Barcelona native, is out of the closet as a pro-regime activist. In 2000, he founded…

Hillary Clinton is no fan of Donald Trump's rhetoric regarding ISIS. In fact, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has repeatedly suggested that her likely opponent's public utterances are actually aiding the terror organization.

Thousands of Americans participated in that most benign of civic rituals in San Jose, California, on Thursday night: seeing a presidential candidate speak. Of course, that candidate was Donald Trump, so as these engaged citizens streamed out of the arena, they were subjected to astonishing levels…

President Obama's remarks on Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, appear to have been drafted long before the current political season began in earnest. Obama claimed, for example, that the Republican party is "beholden to China," the New York Times reported. That revelation comes as a surprise to those…

Stop the presses: A British-born lifelong leftist doesn't much care for Donald Trump. In other news, a dog has bitten a man.

This week comes yet more evidence—as if any were needed—that North Korea is not actually a functioning nation-state, but rather a criminal enterprise masquerading as a country. A spectacular bank heist earlier this year, which saw the South Asian nation of Bangladesh robbed of $81 million, has now…

Latino voters, we have been told ad nauseam, are uniquely hostile to Donald Trump. As conventional wisdom has it, the property magnate's hostility to illegal immigration will doom him with this crucial, and growing, voting bloc. (This despite the fact that half of Latino voters say they are willing…

Talk about police brutality. Wendell Pierce, an actor well known to fans of HBO's The Wire as Detective Bunk Moreland, was arrested early Saturday for simple battery. Pierce, a Hillary Clinton supporter, allegedly assaulted a Bernie Sanders fan. TMZ reports:

Emirates Airline it's decidedly not, but North Korea's flag carrier Air Koryo has strived to improve its inflight product in recent years. The state-run airline rolled out "new planes, new in-flight entertainment options, [and] smart new uniforms for the cabin attendants," this year, noted…

When three Nobel laureates (Richard Roberts, medicine; Finn Kydland, economics; and Aaron Ciechanover, economics) announced that they would take a vacation to North Korea recently, the organization that sponsored the junket, the International Peace Foundation, was at pains to declare that the trip…

Hollywood, Fla.

Talk radio's leading political characters have split into separate camps during this highly charged election season: Mark Levin and Glenn Beck have thrown in firmly with Ted Cruz, while a certain San Francisco-based botanist has consistently served as one of Donald Trump's leading boosters in the…

Silver Spring, Md.

About a year ago, the New York Times magazine published an article detailing, in breathless terms, the wonderful "humaneness" of a Norwegian prison. Halden prison, the Nordic nation's most secure detention center, boasts "modern, cheerful and well-­appointed facilities," the Times rhapsodized. The…

It's no secret that intelligence is not precisely correlated with moral wisdom. But it's still alarming that three Nobel laureates have apparently decided to pay a visit to North Korea.

What's the hardest role to cast in theater? Surely, one of them has to be Frankie Valli of 'Four Seasons' fame, whose story is told in Jersey Boys. How many actors, after all, can boast Valli's combination of diminutive stature, Mediterranean complexion – and most important of all, that inimitable…

Rhode Island is officially a "safe space."

Who is to "blame" for the rise of Donald Trump? It's a question that pundits across the ideological spectrum have been attempting to answer for months. And now the pontificator in chief, Barack Obama, has weighed in with his own theory of the real estate tycoon's political success.

What "polling crisis?" The following important missive just landed in my inbox:

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is nothing if not consistent. His incompetent (and unremittingly cruel) leadership extends not only to his miserable domestic record. Kim is proving to be a disaster on the international scene as well.

Ted Cruz thinks that Donald Trump embodies "New York values." Hillary Clinton isn't so sure.

The Washington, D.C. streetcar – a 2.2.-mile, slower-than-walking form of "transportation" that took nearly a decade and $200 million to complete – is not often heralded as an urban planning success story. Even the partisans of new urbanism – the types who loathe cars and venerate all things rail -…

One of the first places I visited on a government-sanctioned "educational" tour to Cuba several years back was the Plaza de la Revolucion, a hideous expanse of concrete at the center of Havana that makes, say, Tiananmen Square look positively charming. It was there that President Obama was featured…

The Associated Press's story on the 15-year prison sentence that the North Korean government has handed down to American college student Otto Warmbier contains a strange assertion.

Right after half-heartedly condemning Castro's Cuba for being "authoritarian" and "undemocratic" at Wednesday night's debate, Bernie Sanders made a pivot that was predictable to anyone who has ever eavesdropped in a coffee shop in Sanders's adopted state of Vermont: He rhapsodized on the wonders of…

China may still lag far behind the United States in total gross domestic product, but that's not how most Americans see it. According to a new Gallup survey, fully 50 percent of Americans view China as the world's leading economic power; only 37 percent of respondents think of the United States as…

On a lackluster evening for Donald Trump, one fact stands out as particularly ominous: Trump won a massive victory among people who voted early in Louisiana. But among those who went to the ballot box on election day itself, Trump tied with Ted Cruz. That strongly suggests that Trump's campaign is…

The war on things that happen to look like smoking has reached 33,000 feet. The Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it would ban the use of e-cigarettes on commercial airplanes. (Many airlines had already taken the action, before the government decided to step in.)

Donald Trump has yet to win an outright majority in a primary or caucus – though he's getting closer, pulling in 46 percent of the vote in Nevada. But he's winning massive numbers of votes.

Former United Nations ambassador Bill Richardson has long been boastful of his close relations with the North Korean regime. During his misbegotten 2008 presidential campaign, Richardson bragged often of his tight relations with the Kim dynasty, among sundry other tyrannies, including Cuba and…

Last week, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill to rename the street that the Chinese embassy sits on in Washington from International Place to Liu Xiaobo Plaza. Liu, of course, is the dissident Chinese intellectual who has been imprisoned since 2008 for signing the pro-democracy…

They say that past performances are the best predictors of the future. So far, the 2016 elections are proving the veracity of that point.

He always seemed happy—at least to my 9-year-old self. At my Little League games, he had his photo taken with each team. At the grand opening of a bakery owned by my friend's mom, he showed up at the last minute to personally cut the ribbon. He'd tuck into plates of pasta on Federal Hill, the…

Print newspapers remain highly influential in South Korea, none more so than the Chosun Ilbo, the country's leading daily. (To put its dominance in context, consider that the Chosun Ilbo has a print circulation of 1.8 million, while the U.S.'s top-selling newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, sells…

Why does Donald Trump's respectable finish in the Iowa caucuses look so much like a stinging defeat? After all, for a conventional candidate, Trump's performance could easily be spun as a victory. In profoundly hostile territory – Iowa's GOP voters are deeply religious, while Trump is … Trump – the…

Is it safe to travel to North Korea? (Let's leave the question of ethics aside; that's more open and shut. No, it is not ethical to travel to North Korea.) The Associated Press delved into the question this week, in light of the ongoing detention of an American college student who has "vacationing"…

Texas senator Ted Cruz has infamously attacked Donald Trump for supposedly embodying "New York values."

And then there were three. The North Korean government announced on Friday that it has detained another American tourist, bringing the tally of western hostages festering in Pyongyang to two Americans and one Canadian.

Late last year, a group of Oberlin students delivered a list of demands to the Ohio college's president and trustees. The demands were ostensibly meant to redress wrongs suffered by the college's black students. (Oberlin's president has just offered a thoughtful response, which can be read here.)…

After delivering an endorsement speech on behalf of Donald Trump on Tuesday evening, Sarah Palin failed to appear at a joint rally scheduled for the following morning. Perhaps Trump doesn’t like sharing the stage with somebody who has (almost) as much start power as him. Or, maybe more likely, the…

Is Donald Trump Pat Buchanan redux? Sure, Buchanan is outwardly pious, while Trump is . . . well, Trump. (Nobody ever doubted Buchanan's anti-abortion bona fides, for example.) And while Buchanan, whatever you make of his politics, is undeniably a serious intellectual, Trump . . . well, at the very…

Canada-born Texas senator Ted Cruz may be annoyed that Donald Trump has begun playing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." at his rallies. But one person evidently isn't: Mr. Springsteen himself.

When political candidates play Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." at their campaign rallies, you can usually assume they've never listened to the lyrics. But Donald Trump's apparent decision to add the 1984 tune his warm-up music bespeaks a certain political savvy.

You may recall the sad coda to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, which occurred a year ago this week. Several months after eleven Parisian journalists were savagely murdered for the "crime" of committing acts of free expression, PEN America, an organization devoted to promoting free speech, planned to…

So was it a hydrogen bomb or not? The answer, for the reasons elegantly laid out by Asia expert Sean King, may be largely irrelevant. But that doesn't mean North Korea's latest nuclear test isn't revelatory.

It’s good news, of course, that the Japanese government has agreed to acknowledge the plight of the comfort women; the tens of thousands of women, many of whom who were Korean, who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese military in the first half of the twentieth century. Japan has now…

Conservative critics like to carp about the New York Times and National Public Radio being woefully out of touch with, oh, about half the country. Events over the weekend demonstrate why those criticisms, while often tedious, continue to have merit.

So dominant is Hillary Clinton's polling in the presidential primaries, notes the press critic Howard Kurtz, that the media have essentially stopped paying attention to the Democratic race at all. The logic, for a media organization, is simple: Why lavish limited resources on a fait accompli? The…

Take that, Gerald Ford. Donald Trump, if he becomes president, would be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." His blood pressure and lab test results are "astonishingly excellent." His most recent medical exam showed only "positive results."

In a television interview Thursday, during which he responded to the killings in San Bernardino, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan asserted, "What we have seen—and a common theme among many of these mass shootings—is a theme of mental illness." In the context of the slaughter in southern California,…

It turns out that Hamlet isn't the only work whose central plot device is a play within a play. Cole Porter's musical Kiss Me, Kate, which is playing at Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre until January 3, employs the same conceit, and to brilliant effect.

While campaigning in New Hampshire recently, Hillary Clinton sounded a Donald Trumpian note on immigration.

How lucky is Hillary Clinton that her sole (credible) competitor for the Democratic nomination for president is a dyspeptic, self-described socialist who doesn’t appear to actually wish to be president? So lucky that nearly a year out from the 2016 election, she’s already running her general…

Give a man a reputation as an early riser, as the old saw goes, and he can sleep until noon everyday. The same phenomenon evidently applies to bad reputations as well. Brand Donald Trump a bigot, and suddenly every policy he endorses, no matter how innocuous or mainstream, becomes repugnant.

Maybe he is the Republican Obama after all. Like the outgoing president, Florida senator Marco Rubio is charismatic, self-assured, and intelligent, as his performance in Tuesday night’s debate displayed. Alas, also like the president, Senator Rubio harbors an anti-intellectual streak, one that is…

President Obama announced today to much fanfare (and to much angst on the right) that he is killing the proposed KeystoneXL pipeline, which would transport Canadian tar sands oil through the United States. But as much as he would like to claim the mantle of environmentalism (this is the man who…

Ralph Nader, man-splainer?

Mosaic has published a moving memoir, written by Czech Holocaust survivors, that's well worth reading. "As the war ends and she comes down from the mountains of Slovakia, a Jewish girl discovers that she can still be 'moved by something other than the mere struggle for existence,'" Mosaic says.

I’m a sophisticated guy. A deep thinker, even. Shallowness’s scourge, you might say. 

The Republican candidates for president were remarkably unified in the (few) policy preferences they espoused at their debates on Wednesday night. All support cutting taxes and reducing regulation, and all oppose crony capitalism. The candidates may be remarkably diverse in terms of ethnicity and…

Lincoln Chafee’s abortive presidential candidacy was treated by many as a joke, but the focus of the former governor and senator’s campaign was deadly serious: His was the stridently anti-war candidacy.

Even if it were true that the “American people are sick and tired of hearing about [Hillary Clinton’s] emails,” as Vermont senator Bernie Sanders asserted on Tuesday (there is not a scintilla of evidence that that is the case, by the way), that’s an utterly irrelevant standard to apply when judging…

Donald Trump may own some of the nation’s most chichi country clubs – they don’t let just anybody in the Mar-a-Lago! – but his base of political support comes from clubs of a different sort. Ten years after two writers took to these pages to urge Republicans to appeal to people at Sam’s Club rather…

Just about every American knows the sheer animal frustration of sitting in traffic. Numerous studies have also pointed to the serious economic toll that traffic jams exact. Less understood, however, are the major problems that congestion on the nation’s inland waterways present.

With their attacks on his ideology, misogyny, and hair failing to wound him, Donald Trump’s opponents have decided to really cut to the quick: They’re now attacking the boastful billionaire’s business record. For a man whose sense of self-worth is clearly wrapped up in his net-worth (he has…

Storm Lake, Iowa

Many American cities have suffered through alarming increases in their homicide rates this summer. New York City is not one of them. 

Predicting the collapse of North Korea is a bit like predicting the collapse of Donald Trump’s lead in the polls: it never seems to happen. Yet, on several occasions in recent days, South Korean president Park Geun-hye has intimated that North Korea’s horrific regime may be more unstable than we…

Seoul

It was late last year when former Florida governor Jeb Bush mused that he might have to “lose the primary to win the general [election]” in 2016. Bush’s oddly phrased point was that rather than try to appeal to the most conservative voters in the GOP base, he’d instead hew to the center. That would…

When is a North Korean agent not a North Korean agent? Apparently when he’s ‘Cambodian.’

One of the more frustrating things about the three years I lived in a “mixed” neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C., was the bus I was forced to rely on to get to work. The infamous X2, which promenades down H Street, not far from the U.S. Capitol, is a cornucopia of everything grating about…

Donald Trump, to borrow a phrase, is “dead to me.” Well, not exactly, but in a radio interview Wednesday with a San Francisco-based nutritionist, Trump did indulge in one of modern politicians’ most irritating habits: praising the airports in developing countries like China, and lamenting the…

On Monday, President Obama arrived on a presidential visit to Ethiopia. The trip to the east African state raised eyebrows, even among President Obama’s allies on the American left.

Actor Tom Selleck has shirked California’s restrictions on water use in a pretty deplorable way. The Los Angeles Times reports,

Oklahoma senator James Inhofe did the world no favors earlier this year when he brought a snowball onto the Senate floor in order to “disprove” global warming. For one, a blizzard hitting Washington, D.C. tells us absolutely nothing about whether man-made climate change is indeed occurring. His…

Jon Bon Jovi is nobody’s idea of a conservative. Indeed, the hirsute rocker is a well-known Democrat. And yet, when Chris Christie announced his bid for the Republican nomination for president on Tuesday, and played a Bon Jovi tune in the process, the musician didn’t complain. Indeed, reports…

Last week’s horrific events in Charleston demonstrate, unfortunately, that there are violent homegrown extremists in this country. The extent to which they present a danger to the citizens of the United States is a serious issue worth considering.

Fortunately for us, the middle-aged journalists-cum-anthropologists at the Washington Post are here to explain the psychological intricacies of those Americans who are roughly between the ages of 18 and 34. Indeed, it seems that just about every day, the Post publishes a new piece “explaining”…

On Tuesday, a big announcement was made by a publicity-seeking has-been with bad hair. Oh, and Donald Trump also declared that he was running for president.

Despite its boasting a much ballyhooed Pyongyang bureau, the Associated Press filed its report on the supposed fire at the iconic Koryo Hotel in the North Korean capital last week from its. . .Tokyo bureau. It appears that no AP reporters in North Korea have contributed reporting on the fire – this…

The Koryo Hotel is probably the most famous hotel in Pyongyang. (Granted, that’s a small pool.) It’s the usual spot where tourists stay on their unethical, ill-advised junkets to the country. And it’s apparently on fire.

In at least one respect, visiting China is a little bit like traveling back in time to America in, say, 1957. (Or so I gather.) That is, people routinely smoke cigarettes in shopping malls, elevators, lines, apartment building hallways, schools, and yes, even hospitals. (Oh, and of course bars and…

With so many Republican candidates announcing their bids for the presidency these days, one our most hallowed election-year rituals can’t be far behind. I refer, of course, to when fading musical acts attempt to prove their progressive bona fides by making a stink when a candidate they disagree…

Even as it becomes ever more clear that last week’s Amtrak horror in Philadelphia had nothing to do with, as the refrain goes, “America’s Failing Infrastructure,™” many in the media and lobbying spheres have continued to demand greater spending on rail. As part of that campaign, this week, a New…

Even as it has become increasingly clear that the Amtrak horror in Philadelphia was caused by faulty driving rather than – say it with me – “America’s crumbling infrastructure,” the media have lit up with calls for increased federal spending on rail. In doing so, they frequently repair to our…

The clamor for “trigger warnings” has, predictably, spread to the Classics. This isn’t particularly surprising: From Herodotus to Livy to Tacitus, the body of literature that used to be called the Canon is chock-full of violence, sadism, and what would now be considered racism.

The crusade against public tobacco use has long been predicated on protecting people from “secondhand smoke.” Sparing non-smokers from tobacco fiends’ cariogenic emissions was the logic that compelled cities from Paris to New York to even Richmond, Virginia (home of Phillip Morris!) to kick smokers…

Whatever one makes of either one of them, the similarities between Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina (who’s just announced she’s running for president) stop more or less at the chromosomal level. Fiorina is an accomplished (if controversial) businesswoman; Palin, a half-term governor and television…

Even by the low, low standards of North Korean "diplomats," the scene at the United Nations on Thursday was a particularly vile one.

There’s ominous (is there any other kind?) news from North Korea. South Korean intelligence has reported that Kim Jong-un has executed some fifteen of his top officials, including the vice minister of forestry. Granted, as satraps of the world’s cruelest regime, it’s hard to gin up much sympathy…

The insults against the memory of the writers, editors, and artists who were murdered by Islamic extremists in Paris earlier this year continue apace. The New York Times reports:

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe did not go into his line of work to make friends. Since regaining the premiership in 2012, Abe has made a habit of insulting Japan’s neighbors and allies. He’s denied, in the face of copious evidence, that the Imperial Japanese Army used hundreds of thousands of…

The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky is celebrating this April 15 by declaring that America is “the most undertaxed advanced country in the world.” He claims that this chart offers proof of his assertion.

Over the weekend, as he berated the Israeli government for its opposition to the proposed Iranian nuclear deal, President Obama attempted to strike a literary note. Condemning Jerusalem’s supposed flip-flopping on the merits of the deal, the president sarcastically said, “you know, consistency is…

California’s terrible drought has become -- like just about everything else in the United States -- a political issue. Many liberals have taken to blaming anthropogenic climate change for the drought, while some conservatives have placed the blame at the feet of “liberal environmentalists.” The…

Several months ago, comedian Patton Oswalt, theretofore a favorite among the bien pensant Internet types, angered the online left with a plea for satire over self-victimization. After being accused of all manner of horribles, from “victim-blaming” to “victim-shaming,” he attempted to win back his…

It was a story perfectly designed for the new journalism model of “outrage clicks.”

Countries that choose to host North Korean embassies (the United States is, quite rightly, not among them) take a real risk. Not only is the regime that they serve a horror show, but many of the country’s “diplomats” are literally criminals. When not conducting “diplomacy,” they engage in money…

Budweiser Derangement Syndrome is a real problem for the 139-year-old brewer. Despite being a perfectly serviceable mid-priced beer (perfect for hot summer days, sporting events, and when one is too full to stomach an otherwise excellent Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA), it’s pilloried across the…

Lost in the maelstrom surrounding Hillary Clinton’s utterly bizarre decision to violate protocol and use a private email system to conduct public business while serving as secretary of state is another festering Clinton scandal. (Of Clinton scandals, there is no end, to mangle Ecclesiastes.) That’s…

Hillary Clinton has no defense for her baffling decision to shirk protocol and use a private email server when conducting government business as secretary of state. (In this, even the liberal Slate magazine agrees!) Rather than justify her conduct, Clinton’s sycophants have generally trotted out…

The dead enders defending Hillary Clinton’s frankly bizarre decision to break protocol and use a personal email address while conducting official business have seized on several arguments to defend their heroine. They trumpet the fact that current Secretary of State John Kerry is the first person…

Sherman marched right into it. At an event in Washington on Friday, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, held forth on the subject of the prickly relations between South Korea and Japan -- and did so in a way that seemed to blame the victims in the situation.

Dieudonne, the alleged “comedian” whose performances have been banned across France on account of his anti-Semitism, may not have won any Oscars this week, but he was given another award recently. In Tehran earlier this month, Iran’s Holocaust-denying former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave…

The country’s incoming college students have been exhorted, repeatedly, to major in something “useful,” rather than something intellectual. The idea is that there is a split between “useful” majors, which teach a specific skill (like marketing, computer science, or architecture) and “useless”…

There was a nugget in President Obama’s widely criticized speech at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month that hasn’t received the notice –- and, frankly, the opprobrium -- that it deserved. (In fact, only Salon.com of all places, seems to have glommed onto it.) Towards the end of his…

Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of a United Nations’s Commission on Inquiry’s report on human rights in North Korea. The U.N. report laid out, in devastating detail, what we’ve known for all too long: Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship is the Westboro Baptist Church of regimes –…

As a “millennial” (roughly speaking, someone between the ages of 18 and 29), I’ve grown used to being tarred with fallacious accusations. We millennials are spoiled and mollycoddled! (Nope.) We’re tech-obsessives who would never even think of picking up something as fuddy duddy as a book! (Wrong…

If you ignore the cringe-worthy opening line of this article from the Pew Research Center – the Holocaust did far worse than “decimate” Europe’s Jewish population – you will find some interesting facts. In a nutshell, Europe’s Jewish population continues to decline. There are now approximately 1.4…

The Rick Perry reboot is well underway. There are the glasses of course. And, according to Politico, the longest-serving governor in Texas history is now casting himself as a more “moderate” politician.  He’s now more pragmatic and pro-compromise, Politico reports. 

Lee Smith, a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, writes at Tablet:

As the prime minister of constitutionally pacifist Japan, Shinzo Abe cannot sound belligerent notes—even when his citizens are beheaded by ISIS, as occurred this past weekend. Still, the Financial Times (note: I'm a subscriber and a big fan) may have been overstating the case a bit with its choice…

Ramesh Ponnuru is no fan of the bizarre, anti-intellectual jeremiad that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal launched in Politico Magazine early this week. At Bloomberg View, Ponnuru writes:

There’s no doubt that convicted felons often face a difficult time reentering society after leaving prison. One particular difficulty is finding gainful employment. But while the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not break down employment stats for felons, in 2011, the New York Times reported –-…

It’s been several weeks since the actor and comedian Patton Oswalt (you may remember him from his star turn as “Toast A Bun Manager” in 2009’s Observe and Report) outraged his tens of thousands of Twitter followers with the following suggestion: 

In spite of his own mostly impressive educational pedigree, President Obama has always harbored an anti-intellectual (or, to be generous, anti-academic) streak. Whether insulting art history in a failed appeal to "Real 'Muricans," or developing a philistine "College Scorecard," which reduces the…

It’s difficult to tell whether the North Korean regime has anything to with the hack attack on Sony Pictures, or the subsequent terrorist threats against movie theaters planning to screen The Interview. The forthcoming Sony film centers around an assassination plot against North Korean dictator Kim…

Portland, Oregon, city commissioner Steve Novick is nothing if not verbose. Since his 2012 election, he’s used his publicly funded position to rail against DirectTV, driving around to look for a parking space, and–I’m not kidding–sitting in chairs. Rare indeed is the issue that the proudly…

In an article turgidly tallying up the racial backgrounds of the actors appearing in Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie Exodus, contributor to The Week Jonathan Merritt says that viewers will “notice one ingredient painfully missing: melanin.”

Who would have thought that that Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, and Zac Brown, accomplished musicians all, would be so, well, tone-deaf? But how else to explain their choice of song—Creedence Clearwater's famously anti-war anthem “Fortunate Son”—at the ostensibly pro-military “Concert for Valor”…

Nobody ever said to “beware of sisters bearing gifts.” So, when my younger sister offered  me her car as she headed off to the Peace Corps a couple of years ago, I leapt at the opportunity. 

Foreigners should always stay out of North Korea. By traveling there, after all, tourists provide financial support to a manifestly evil regime. Moreover, they put themselves at risk – two American tourists are currently being held hostage there. (A third was released from captivity just this…

Providence

Florida Polytechnic “University” (it isn’t accredited) is making headlines this week by opening a bookless library. Instead of checking out traditional codex books, students will be forced to read class material on tablets, e-readers, and/or laptops. According to the middle-aged librarians and…

Here, in the parlance of the times, is a “pro-tip.” When attempting to rebut the notion that anti-Semitism in Europe is largely a problem caused by young Muslim men, don’t cite two horrific anti-Semitic atrocities perpetrated by . . . young Muslim men.

It’s been nearly a year since Michelle Obama began her bizarre, medically discredited campaign to get Americans to drink more water. The campaign, dubbed Drink Up, began last September with a pro-water speech in Watertown, Wisconsin (we were meant to find the location clever), and has since morphed…

Casual dining establishment TGI Fridays, you may have heard, is advertising what it bills as “endless” appetizers for a mere $10. Yet if you dine at Fridays here in the District of Columbia, you can expect to spend $11, not $10, on the “endless apps,” once DC’s 10 percent dining tax is included.…

That the North Korean regime has taken another American tourist hostage—this time it’s one Jeffrey Edward Fowle of Miamisburg, Ohio, who was seized in May after a Bible was reportedly discovered in his hotel room—is hardly surprising. North Korea is ferociously repressive, and, as Paul Marshall…

Like many supporters of marijuana law reform, Democratic congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon makes his case for legalizing pot by...talking about how terrible alcohol is. A marijuana legalization “FAQ” posted on the congressman’s official web page informs readers not only that “marijuana is less…

A graphic that is ricocheting around the liberal blogosphere this week is purported to demonstrate–what else?–how stupid and ignorant Americans are. (Well, non-Democrat Americans presumably.)

A graduate of two Ivy League institutions, the author of one highly regarded book (the less said about The Audacity of Hope, the better), and a former lecturer at the University of Chicago, President Obama has a reputation for being something of an intellectual. It’s clearly part of his…

President Obama traveled to Wisconsin yesterday and engaged in a tasteless bit of anti-intellectualism. “A lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career,” he told an audience in Waukesha, “but I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with…

When you first meet Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at MIT, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, leading climate “skeptic,” and all-around scourge of James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Al Gore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and sundry other climate…

Even after 65 years of hideous barbarity, the murderousness of the Kim regime still holds the capacity to shock. Korea-watchers are baffled at the news that Kim Jong-un had his uncle and former mentor, Jang Song-thaek, summarily executed for “treason” this week. (For analysis of the events leading…

We’re going to hear a lot in the coming days about how the “Chinese” education system is superior to America’s.  That’s because the results of an international exam were released today, and American students fared predictably poorly. And it was “Asian nations [who] dominated the test,” reports the…

In recent years, as its regime has been increasingly hemmed in by sanctions, North Korea has encouraged foreign tourists to visit the country. Unfortunately, it’s been working—nearly 10,000 Westerners now travel to the North Korea each year. One of them, 85-year-old Merrill Newman of Palo Alto,…

It’s a pity that there’s no Portland, Oregon, edition of the New York Post. After all, one can only dream of the headlines the wags at the Post would come up with to describe the ongoing travails of (now former) Multnomah County (home of Portland) Commissioner Jeff Cogen.

Taipei

Portland city commissioner (as city councilmen are called in that Oregon city) Steve Novick has never been one to respect the limits of his office - or recognize that it has any limits at all. Since being elected just over a year ago, Novick has used his minor public position to 1) assail DirecTV…

A purportedly funny photo ricocheting around the Internet popped into my inbox last week, apparently courtesy of the right-wing blog RedState. The Photoshopped image is a play on the famous Dos Equis beer campaign built around the bearded, debonair “Most Interesting Man in the World,” who says, “I…

Craftsbury, Vt.

Could we be witnessing a revival of moral standards in our politics? Not only does Anthony Weiner look certain to go down in ignominious defeat in New York’s mayoral election in a couple of weeks, but Multnomah County, Oregon, chair Jeff Cogen–or, if you prefer, Portland’s Weiner--who admitted to a…

When it comes to North Korea, it’s helpful to keep a simple rule of thumb in mind: don’t trust anybody who refers to the country as the “DPRK.” (That would be the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the country’s official – and yes, bleakly ironic – name.) Calling North Korea the “DPRK” is not…

Portland city commissioner (as city councilmen are known in the Oregon city) Steve Novick may have been elected only last year, but he’s wasted no time in using his public office to indulge his personal crotchets. Drawing on his extensive experience running a business–which is to say, absolutely…

Smokeless, odorless, and, indeed, tobacco-less, electronic cigarettes, or “e-cigarettes,” in common parlance, are projected to become a $1 billion industry this year. Yes, that’s “electronic” cigarettes: battery-powered gadgets that convert liquid nicotine into vapor, which the user inhales. The…

Have you heard the news? Janet Yellen is positively clairvoyant!

Portland is nothing if not tolerant. The picturesque city in the Pacific Northwest has, in recent years, endured one mayor who admitted to a gay affair with an underage intern, a different mayor who claimed residency in Washington state (where there is no income tax) yet voted in Oregon, not to…

Roh (pronounced “No”) Moo-hyun, the startlingly left-wing president of South Korea from 2003 to 2008, offered a remarkable concession to the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il at a summit in Pyongyang in 2007. According to partial transcripts of the meeting, which were released for the first…

As a “millennial” (i.e. one born between 1980 and 2000), I’ve grown used to reading descriptions of myself – written, always, by those much older than I – that I don’t recognize. It’s a bit like hearing my voice on tape – can that really be me? So take, for example, the trendy idea that people my…

In terms of the “optics,” it doesn’t look good when you initiate a lawsuit against “Baby Girl.” But don’t let that fool you into thinking that the Capobianco family of South Carolina, who launched the lawsuit “Adoptive Couple versus Baby Girl,” and who won today at the Supreme Court, were in the…

President Obama told a German audience today that the U.S. lags behind other countries because Americans don't speak enough foreign languages. It’s not the first time he’s expressed the sentiment: back in 2008, Obama said, “It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English,…

The small Southeast Asian country of Laos outraged civilized people everywhere last month by repatriating nine escaped North Koreans orphans. The escapees, who had travelled through China and into Laos, are now likely to suffer harsh punishment. Repatriated North Koreans are known to face…

In February, North Korea conducted its third nuclear weapons test since 2006. The test, performed in defiance of scores of United Nations sanctions, outraged the international community. Within weeks, the U.N. had leveled more sanctions on the rogue regime, beefing up inspections of North Korean…

In 2003, the governments of North and South Korea agreed to establish the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a manufacturing zone located just over the North Korean border. The South Korean conglomerates Hyundai and the Korea Land Corporation run the facilities, where more than 100 other smaller South…

Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson granted an interview this weekend to the online magazine Salon, in which he discussed his most recent vacation to Pyongyang. Richardson calls for “out of the box” diplomacy toward the regime, and lauds Dennis Rodman’s recent visit there as “healthy.” He…

It’s good to be a government worker in Portland, Oregon. And not just because of the subsidized sex changes. It seems that city workers’ salaries are also ample enough to support a family and . . . finance a little terrorism on the side.

Eric Schmidt and Bill Richardson’s Pyongyang adventure continues to pay dividends.

In the popular imagination, Japan is a tech-obsessed cyber utopia awash in neon lights, “bleeding-edge” electronics, and, of course, robots. While there is some accuracy in the clichés, it’s also true that Japan remains a nation of serious writers and readers, and not just of comic books: Its…

When former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson returned from his bizarre, unauthorized vacation to North Korea last month, he took to the pages of the Washington Post to tell us that North Korean officials had assured him that “now that [the regime]’s security has been guaranteed by a successful…

It would seem, at this point, that former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson probably has a vacation home in Pyongyang. He’s visited Stalinist North Korea more than a half a dozen times, and has often boasted of his close relationship with “the North Koreans.” (Presumably, he means “the North Korean…

Park Geun-hye has been elected South Korea's first female leader. The Korea Herald reports:

Relations between China and Japan, never particularly placid, have reached bona fide crisis proportions over the past several months—and could get worse.

Getting into a taxi at the end of a recent night on the town, I gave the driver my address. “Are you sure?” he asked nervously. I had to sigh in familiar exasperation—I’d been through this rigmarole many times before. And I only moved to Trinidad in May!

The president’s sycophants have seized on an excuse for why their candidate was stammering and incoherent last night: Barack Obama is just too darn “professorial.” The Huffington Post lamented Obama’s “professorial demeanor.” A New York Times editorial bemoaned the fact that the president chose to…

Sometimes an uninhabited island chain is just an uninhabited island chain. But that’s never the case in East Asia, where territorial disputes often involve fishing rights, energy supplies, and, perhaps most importantly, the re-litigation of historical grievances.

The course of starting a successful business never did run smooth—particularly for bored, retired athletes. Johnny Unitas blew his football fortune on bowling alleys and a circuit board company. Björn Borg came close to selling his Wimbledon trophies to make ends meet after his fashion label failed…

In 1978, a little-known law called the Indian Child Welfare Act was signed with the intention of keeping families together. Today, it’s being used to tear them apart.

Jared Lee Loughner, who killed six people and injured thirteen others (including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) last year near Tucson, cut a deal yesterday: By agreeing to plead guilty to perpetrating the massacre, federal prosecutors in return spared the 23-year-old from the death penalty.

Earlier this year, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara took time out from presiding over the world’s largest city to initiate a fundraising drive. It wasn’t his own campaign coffers that Ishihara was seeking to fill—campaign spending is severely limited in Japan, anyway. Rather, the famously…

The Washington Post reports that D.C. councilman (and four-time mayor) Marion Barry has “launched a last ditch effort to slow or derail the city’s planned streetcar line on H Street, arguing it’s not been well-thought out and is too expensive for the number of riders it will serve.”

Like many colleges and universities, Princeton professes its devotion to “institutional equity and diversity.” The university’s website claims that the school “actively seek[s] students, faculty, and staff of exceptional ability and promise who .  .  . will bring a diversity of viewpoints and…

When I learned recently that I’d be moving back to the East Coast for a job after several years out west, my girlfriend asked a question she knew would be on my mind: “How soon will you be able to make it to Providence for New York System?”

A host of liars, miscreants, and extreme leftists – and those were just the serious candidates! – squared off yesterday in the Portland, Oregon, mayoral election. In total, 23 candidates were on the ballot to see who would run the so-called “Rose City” (or, more appropriately, “Insufferable…

The Los Angeles Times reports that, “A reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom caused an outbreak of norovirus-induced diarrhea and nausea that struck nine of 13 members of a girls' soccer team in October 2010.” This grim news comes on the heels of a 2010 study, which found that more than…

Longview, Washington—When an Australian shipping company named Millennium Bulk Terminals announced plans last November to open a coal export terminal in this port city of 36,000, few predicted any trouble. Millennium quickly bought the site on which the terminal would be located, a property on the…

Beijing

Camas, Washington

Portland, Oregon