So many myths and misunderstandings about gun control, from all sides of the debate, and so little time! Here goes: Myth No. 1: The extremism of the National Rifle Association and its chief executive officer, Wayne LaPierre, is hurting its cause. LaPierre’s seemingly unhinged recent performances, first at his no-questions news conference and then on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” have convinced gun-control advocates and members of the news media that he is out of his mind. He isn’t. His appearances wer

Back in 2011, at the dawn of a long presidential campaign, I established a fine baseline for my credentials as a political prognosticator: I told readers that Mitt Romney’s strongest challengers for the Republican nomination would be Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.Neither one has been heard from since.Could I top that record in 2012?Pretty close. Last spring, I announced in a column that Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio would be Romney’s running mate. Sure, I hedged a littl

Remarkable developments are embedded within an otherwise humdrum announcement last month by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which said that the number of homeless people in the U.S. declined slightly in 2012, according to a count on a single night last January. The slight dip, a drop of 0.4 percent to 633,782, continues a trend of improvement now lasting five years. In that time, the U.S. has reduced homelessness by 5.7 percent even as the poverty rate grew by 20 percent. The de

Over the last three decades, Communist China’s leaders have lifted more than 600 million of their citizens out of poverty ― and built one of the world’s most unequal societies. Those two outcomes didn’t have to go hand in hand. They are the result of a conscious decision by the former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and some of his closest associates ― the so-called Eight Immortals ― to safeguard the primacy of the Communist Party by putting their families in charge of opening up China’s economy.

It is not an enviable task, picking the top three bad ideas from our government in a year when they have given us so many to choose from. But The China Post would like to bid the year farewell by remembering the worst while hoping for the best for 2013.While risking being unoriginal and repetitive, we give the top spot to the undisputed king of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot ideas. The decisions to hike power prices by as much as a third and oil prices by some NT$3 in one go around early 2012 are ba

At this juncture, with the kind of leaders we see in place in China, Japan and South Korea, the outlook for Asia in 2013 does not look so good. For the first time, leadership changes in those three countries came almost simultaneously. Each of the new heads of state wants to establish a trademark leadership role in Asia. To do so, they cannot display any weakness or be considered soft. To promote themselves in their own countries and on the world stage, they might have to do things that normally

The only thing in sync as new leaders take office in Northeast Asia is the coincidental timing of the events. But with regard to the old and complex issues dogging the region, their arrival portends more uncertainty rather than a unified approach to problem-solving.Conservative Park Geun-hye’s election as South Korean president completes the set of transitions in this important zone that also places new faces at the helm in China and Japan.Xi Jinping, who takes over as president of an increasing

Most of us acknowledge that some of our most cherished beliefs are based on faith, not facts. Even so, it takes a lot to dislodge those beliefs. When we are confronted by contrary evidence, we may dig in even more deeply. Consider a cautionary tale, exotic to be sure, but helping to explain why evidence-challenged thinking persists in a lot of areas, including politics and business. Harold Camping, a Christian radio talk-show host, predicted that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011, with

We could be nearing a golden hour in U.S. foreign policy, that rare moment when a newly reelected president theoretically has the experience and clout to make good things happen. As President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last March before an unanticipated open microphone, “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” We can think of many places more deserving of presidential flexibility than Russia, which is in such a state of pugnacious isolationi

OXFORD ― Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, recently said of the unfinished agenda for global financial-sector reform: “To start, we need concrete progress with the too-important-to-fail conundrum. We need a global-level discussion of the pros and cons of direct restrictions on business models.” Five years on from the start of the crisis, with the publication of the Liikanen report on European Union banking reform, that debate has finally begun.The Liikanen p