It’s no wonder it took so long. The bipartisan immigration bill introduced this week in the U.S. Senate is a hefty, voluminous achievement. It weighs in at almost 900 pages; given its complex political calibrations, it will need a strong binding to withstand the onslaught to come. The bill lays out a rough, but realistic, road to citizenship for the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. They will have to pay a series of phased- in fines adding up to $2,000, demonstrate a k

The attack on the Boston Marathon is a reminder of the adage that terror is theater. Yes, terror is horror. Yes, terror is murder. Yes, terror is reprehensible. But it is theater, too, played out on a grand stage before an audience of tens of millions. We sit riveted in front of the television or computer screen, demanding the latest updates. We don’t need to know who did it to understand the malevolent brilliance of the staging: an attack on the audience at a sporting event where the crowd is u

As North Korea’s Kim Dynasty takes the world to the brink yet again, let’s keep our eyes on the endgame. While Beijing may not be able to tell Pyongyang what to do and it’s clear the two sides aren’t as chummy as most outsiders think, Beijing can pull the plug. And that’s what it must do. North Korea is a criminal enterprise that denies its people the most basic rights and stays afloat largely thanks to weapons exports to fellow bad actors, sales of natural resources to China at below-world-mark

A Washington Post/ABC News poll this week says 70 percent of Americans think the Republican Party is out of touch.The same poll found that 86 percent of Americans ― and 84 percent of those who call themselves Republicans ― support requiring background checks on gun purchases made at gun shows or over the Internet. On Wednesday, a measure that would do exactly that was stopped in the U.S. Senate after gaining the support of only four Republicans.Any questions?That shameful disconnect defeated the

How do people form political beliefs? When will they change their minds? When will actual facts matter? A recent study, conducted by political scientist Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and two co-authors, offers some clues. One group of participants was provided with a 2009 news article in which Sarah Palin claimed that the Barack Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act created death panels and that these panels included bureaucrats authorized to decide whether seniors were “worthy of heal

If freedom of the press is a foundation of democracy, the return of privately owned daily newspapers in Myanmar earlier this month marks a significant step in the government’s reform process. For the first time since 1964, independent newspapers are on sale, ending the state monopoly on daily-newspaper publishing. To many in Myanmar ― those born after dictator Ne Win’s fall from power ― these are the first non-government daily newspapers they have ever seen.The international community has welcom

On Tuesday, China issued its eighth defence white paper in 15 years, elaborating its new security concept and providing detailed information on the diversified employment of its armed forces.As a move to improve its military transparency, the document provides a prism for the outside world to see its defence policy and help others better understand why China is obliged to enhance its military capabilities.While analysing the challenges China’s armed forces are facing today, the white paper empha

To effectively address North Korea’s brinkmanship tactics and China’s overbearing diplomacy, it is essential for Japan and the United States to step up cooperation further.Visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held separate talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. They agreed to press North Korea to exercise self-restraint on ballistic missile launches. They also agreed not to allow the country to possess nuclear arms and to urge the country to undertake con

This week will see the Korean Association of International Studies and the Korea Foundation host an international conference on the role of middle powers in the 21st century. The significance of the conference being held in South Korea is twofold ― it marks Korea’s prominence as a source of innovative and influential scholarship on middlepowerism, and it marks Korea’s growing acceptance of middlepowerism as a national role.Korea is a late entrant into the middle-power category. At the end of Wor