Many Americans have forgotten, or never learned about, the Alger Hiss case. One of the most dramatic trials of the 20th century, it helps explain not only the rise of McCarthyism in the early 1950s and the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, but also the contemporary roles of Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.The Hiss case casts light on why conservatives and liberals are suspicious of each other, on their different attitudes toward elitism, on their understandings of patrio

Tech companies have been pleading with Congress for years to crack down on abusive lawsuits by patent “trolls,” or firms that use obscure patents to extract exorbitant licensing fees. The companies may finally get some real relief, thanks to an unintentional assist from the trolls themselves.These lawsuit-happy patent holders have made reform a Main Street business priority by threatening to sue scores of retailers and small businesses for selling or using off-the-shelf products that allegedly i

If the Gravina Island Bridge in Alaska is the “bridge to nowhere” ― a symbol of wasteful government spending on an unneeded project ― the Pentagon equivalent is the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS).The Gravina Island Bridge was supposed to cost $398 million to connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,250) with its airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50) ― even though ferry service already connected the two locations. But $398 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the

Different groups have different reasons for opposing the blanket amnesty bill, which many Pheu Thai MPs are going full-steam ahead with.Some anti-government groups are fighting the bill because they can’t bear the thought of ousted fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra benefiting from it, while others want to ensure justice and retribution for what happened on the streets in April-May 2010. These are just some of the reasons why anti-government groups and the so-called “progressive”

In the business centers of Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, there is a palpable excitement about the looming economic integration of the region in 2015.In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, some of the most forward-thinking businessmen are economists looking ahead and planning for the time when 10 countries will fuse into a single market of 500 million consumers.That air of anticipation, however, is somehow not as keenly felt in the Philippines, whether by big businessmen o

Mizuho Bank appears to have hastily tried to end its lending scandal with lenient punishments. Given such lax punitive steps, the megabank faces a rocky path ahead to regain public trust that was lost by extending loans to gangsters.Mizuho should show strong determination to make a fresh start, even considering an overhaul of its management system.In connection with Mizuho’s loans to mobsters via its affiliated credit company, Orient Corp., among other entities, the bank has submitted to the Fin

Charles de Gaulle, the French Resistance leader and later president of France, was once warned that he should not hate his friends more than his enemies. “France,” he replied, “has no friends, only interests.”It would be interesting to know how he would have responded had he learned, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently did, that his phone communications had been secretly monitored by an American spy agency. But it’s a pretty safe bet that he wouldn’t have been surprised.Merkel herself pr

For months it was a matter of intense speculation: Who would President Obama nominate to chair the Federal Reserve? Now that he has named Janet Yellen, currently the Fed’s vice chair and an exceptionally well-qualified candidate, maybe we can move on to discussing a more important issue: the challenges facing the nation’s central bank.After having taken extraordinary steps to support the economy since the financial crisis hit in 2008, the Fed must now engineer a return to more normal policies, a

BERKELEY, California ― The first time I went to Washington, D.C., as an adult was in 1993, when I arrived to work for President Bill Clinton in the Treasury Department. Back then, America urgently needed to rebalance the federal budget to rein in explosive growth in the debt/GDP ratio; to overhaul America’s extraordinarily expensive and inefficient health care system; and to begin to deal with global warming via a slow ramp-up of a carbon tax.Beyond these three immediate issues were long-run pol