Does anyone remember Iraq?As the United States moves toward withdrawing its last 46,000 troops from that country by the end of 2011, Iraq has become a black hole. It is the place Americans want to forget and the media hardly cover.No wonder. Although violence is way down since the mid-2000s, there’s been a resurgence of car bombs and sectarian killings. The Iraqi government barely functions, and t

The signature line of President Obama’s June 22 Afghanistan address was “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.” This no doubt resonates among an electorate sick of foreign wars and eager to focus on domestic problems, but it is a wrongheaded statement.Whenever America has eschewed commitments abroad and turned inward, the results have been disastrous. The most isolationist

The idea that the Supreme Court is too pro-business is rapidly becoming the central liberal critique of the institution. During last year’s confirmation hearings for Justice Elena Kagan, Democrats made their theme the need to counter pro-business activism by the conservatives on the court. After the court ended its latest term last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, a Vermont Dem

For the last few weeks, I’ve been unable to get a startling statistic out of my head: Since the recession officially ended, Texas has created more than four of every 10 new jobs in America.That’s right, Texas: the reddest of red states, home to gun lovers and school textbooks that openly question whether the Founding Fathers intended for the separation of church and state. I am no ideologue. Still

James Madison would have smiled had he heard about President Obama’s maneuver, seemingly in defiance of the War Powers Act, to avoid asking Congress to authorize military action in Libya.The act, passed in 1973, came at a time when the Vietnam War had been under way for years without any president asking for congressional approval. Members of Congress wanted future presidents to be obliged to come

Since moving to Philadelphia, I’ve often visited the room in Independence Hall where the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.As July Fourth approached, I felt a special need to return there to pay tribute to the qualities that enabled those men to establish a democratic system. I refer to their ability to compromise and show tolerance for the opinions of ot

The growing number of low-cost carriers in Asia in recent years is putting pressure on Japan to reform its commercial aviation system.Two South Korean LCCs have expanded their routes to include service to and from Japan this year, following similar moves by Chinese and Malaysian low-fare airlines last year. Another South Korean LCC is set to start service to Japan in mid-July. Clearly, Asian LCC o

Yingluck Shinawatra and her Pheu Thai party have won Thailand’s parliamentary elections, claiming a commanding majority in the legislature. The results are a vindication of sorts for Shinawatra’s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed in 2006 by a military coup.We say “of sorts” because Thaksin has been vindicated before: Since the coup, Thai politics have been marked by the co

Forty years ago this month, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that sleep-deprived resident physicians reading electrocardiograms made twice as many errors as their rested counterparts. Back then, in 1971, there were no limits on the hours that medical residents could be scheduled to work. Thirty-six-hour on-call shifts were the norm.Under new rules that take effect