NATO’s Dangerous Wager with Karzai by Ahmed Rashid | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books   Lasting nearly two hours, my off-the-record conversation with Karzai was vigorous, and at times I strongly pushed back, reminding him of his…

Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang? Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. He points out that the universe was apparently born in…

Economist Debates: US politics: Moderator: Let us just reflect that America is not Ireland or Greece. Its debt is still manageable, the government has no problem raising the cash it needs (the opposite actually: bond yields are at historic lows)…

ComPost – Can Palin win? Is that halibut she clubbed completely deceased? Still, viewed as an electability audition, Palin’s series is not going particularly well. Nearly every moment of the second episode’s Commercial Halibut Fishing Trip was — to any…

Washington Post hires conservative blogger – Yahoo! News I’m delighted to announce that Jennifer Rubin will be joining The Post with the launch of a new blog next month. Jennifer will provide critical news coverage and commentary, with an exacting…

North Korean dictator-in-waiting linked to deadly artillery attack The north’s military ”will continue to make merciless military attacks with no hesitation if the South Korean enemy dares to invade our sea territory by 0.001 mm”, it said in the statement…

My TSA Anti-Rant | Mother Jones   For seven years, Republicans insisted that every security procedure ever conceived was absolutely essential to keeping the American public safe, and anyone who disagreed was practically rooting for an al-Qaeda victory. Now a…

Graphene is Next | h+ Magazine All of these properties make graphene a very important material for the future of electronics. It has already been used to create field effect transistors, the primary component of a computer processor. When you…

“Operation: Stop Palin” Gets Rolling | FrumForum There really is a GOP party establishment. That establishment took up Palin as a useful tool in 2008, deployed Palin as an edged anti-Obama weapon in 2009 – and is now horrified to see…

Where to begin. How about: if Greater Israel is dead, why is there such enormous political pressure in Israel to defend every single Greater Israel settlement and expand many more? If the settlements are a “side-show,” why have they doubled…