European defence ministers, meeting on the Spanish holiday island of Mallorca, may have wished they had postponed their get-together. One of their number, Dutchman Eimert van Middelkoop, will not be joining the group for much longer; his government collapsed over the Netherlands’ support for NATO’s Afghan mission. Another, Denmark’s Søren Gade, had to resign his post [...]

The Conservative Party has held the first day of its Spring Forum – the party’s last conference before the General Election. George Osborne and William Hague were amongst those addressing supporters in Brighton, spelling out the choice that faces the British people. The Conservatives have also launched a leaflet setting out the choices facing people at this [...]

As a professional technophile, I have always dismissed outbursts of anti-technology feeling as agreeably retro but harmless, like the effusions of those who still write real letters on paper and tell us all so. I began to question my stance only recently when thinking a little about Jared Lanier’s new book “You are not a gadget”. [...]

Apple’s iPad is dominating the gadget buzz this winter, but a few years ago, we and others made a big deal about the “polyglot” iPod, turning it into a talisman of the globalized supply-chain. The point was to accent the global context in which U.S. prosperity must be maintained. Then we managed to find a mildly [...]

At the time of the euro’s launch in 1999, Milton Friedman famously observed that the euro would not survive the first major European economic recession. In the end, Friedman will prove to have been right. At the time of the euro’s launch in January 1999, Milton Friedman famously observed that the euro would not survive the [...]

The deep recession and current fiscal policy have produced a large deficit and no sign the flow of red ink will cease any time soon. This makes the U.S. government a major borrower in world financial markets. There is speculation that China, which has acquired a huge amount of U.S. Treasury debt, may soon begin unloading it. [...]

On Thursday, Democrats and Republicans came together in the House to pass an emergency bill that will temporarily extend benefits for American workers and small businesses. It showed that in times of great need, our elected officials can still set aside their differences to do right by the American people. But just when we thought we [...]

President Obama called for the summit and my strong impression is that it served his purposes very well. He managed to orchestrate a public event that presented the Democratic bill in more understandable and appealing a fashion that heretofore; underscored the many Republican ideas that are already included in the bill; and rejected the demand [...]

It doesn’t seem possible that Congress will allow the federal surface transportation program to expire on Sunday night. But that’s what we’re facing this weekend. The current law is operating under a series of extensions—the most recent keeps the program going until the end of February. This time, rather than an inconspicuous continuation of the law, a [...]

As I stood watching the Virginia State University drum-line perform in the White House this week (likely the first time an HBCU drum-line has ever performed at the White House), I was reminded of how far we have come as a nation and hopeful about where we are heading. The nation’s Historically Black Colleges and [...]