“I am not a member of any organized political party,” the humorist Will Rogers said. “I am a Democrat.”Even Will Rogers would be shocked at the disjointed and self-destructive congressional Republican Party of today. By forcing a government shutdown and possibly a credit default in a few weeks, a minority of rank-and-file Republican members have run roughshod over the leadership. They are pushing a futile effort to kill President Barack Obama’s health-care law, enacted in 2010, upheld by the Sup

This weekend, the Ladies Professional Golf Association demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice player safety for its own long-term financial health.The occasion was the conclusion of the Reignwood LPGA Classic ― the LPGA’s first tournament in China. The importance of this event for the association’s desired future in China’s rapidly expanding golf market cannot be underestimated. At the top of the leader board going into Sunday’s final round was Guangzhou-born Shanshan Feng. As the LPGA websit

Only a few months have passed since President Obama last boasted that al-Qaida is on “the path to defeat.”But then, just a few days ago, his State Department issued what it called a “worldwide caution” on “the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against U.S. citizens and interests throughout the world.” State warned that al-Qaida is now threatening Americans in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Africa and Central Asia ― practically the entire world.What happened?

The high cost of ideological extremism was on full display in Washington this week, where a radical faction of the Republican Party forced a government shutdown. Mercifully, radicals in Congress, unlike, say, those in Syria, use parliamentary maneuvers rather than guns.But their antics distract U.S. attention from truly serious issues _ such as the growing threat posed by Islamist militants in Syria, where the rising strength of radical Islam could endanger Europe and the entire Mideast.Let me m

PARIS ― Boy, was that ever painful, watching Russian President Vladimir Putin attempting to pry U.S. President Barack Obama’s fingers off the Tomahawk missile trigger and convince him not to go ahead with an attack that Obama most likely didn’t want to launch in the first place.America won, and so did Russia. I realize that sounds bizarre, but this isn’t a football game with a winner and a loser. It’s not like Obama is going to have to give his Nobel Peace Prize to Putin as if it were the Lombar

The U.S. doesn’t deserve Asia’s money, not with half of its government in financial jihad mode, damn the global consequences.The biggest economy has long taken its reserve-currency status for granted, but the events of recent days raise Washington’s hubris to entirely new levels. Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t mention Ted Cruz, John Boehner or the Tea Party this week when he urged major developed economies to adopt responsible policies that avoid negative spillover. He didn’t have to. Their

As the Supreme Court prepares to begin its new term, observers have been discussing the familiar divisions among the justices. Judicial activism is opposed to judicial restraint, liberalism is opposed to conservatism, and those who believe in an evolving or “living” Constitution are opposed to those who believe that the document’s meaning was fixed when its provisions were originally ratified.But there is another division. For more than two centuries, the court’s members have adopted one of four

Horrible things happened in Indonesia between autumn 1965 and spring 1967. There is that eternal battle between memory and forgetting, a reality which reasserts itself when you go into any discussion of the horrors that were inflicted on Indonesians after Sept. 30, 1965. On the night of Sept. 30, the world was informed, a plot by the country’s communist party to seize power had ended up in the murder of six generals of the army. A seventh one survived. He was General Suharto. And he would go on

Malaysia’s Auditor-General’s Report 2012 tabled in parliament on Tuesday has once again thrown up the usual slew of cases involving mismanagement of funds to downright corruption.Some of the cases highlighted are bound to raise a chuckle or two, like how the customs department had to destroy 602,089 ringgit ($185,829) worth of shoes bought for its staff because they did not meet specifications.We are used to seeing customs destroying goods confiscated in the line of duty but to destroy 7,659 pai