In Mississippi, parents pulled their children out of school after learning their principal had traveled to a part of Africa thousands of miles away from the Ebola outbreak. In New Jersey and Georgia, students from areas in Africa completely unscathed by the disease weren’t allowed to come to school. In Texas, a community college rejected … Read more
“MIXED MESSAGE? Obama strikes bipartisan tone — but vows exec action” — Fox News “OBAMA REACHES OUT” — MSNBC “Obama to Voters: ‘I hear you.’” — CNN The night after the 2014 midterm elections, the big three cable news networks headlined their websites with stories of President Obama’s speech concerning the previous night’s events. The headlines … Read more
In 2009, when Dick Cheney left office with a robust approval rating of 13 percent, it seemed nothing united Americans more than a good joke at his expense. Association with the outgoing vice president meant political suicide, a fate John McCain desperately tried to avoid when his campaign politely requested that Cheney skip the 2008 Republican … Read more
In 2008, Nate Silver, a relatively unknown baseball statistician, correctly predicted every Senate race and all but one state in the presidential election. He accomplished this by neither physically reporting from the ground nor by using some esoteric technique of political science. Instead, he used basic statistics to analyze the large volume of polls available … Read more
June 17, 2006 North Waziristan (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) A body, handcuffed and shot in the head from behind, is found in a Miranshah marketplace. It belongs to freelance journalist Hayatullah Khan. Six months prior, Khan had been abducted by five armed men after publishing a photo essay that implicated Americans in the death of … Read more
Our rapidly urbanized world has become a much discussed subject in recent years: more than half of the world’s population today lives in cities. By 2050, 20 percent more will be added to the percentage. Urban populations typically increase in three ways: natural growth, migration, and reclassification of rural to urban area. The United Nations … Read more
For years, American scholars have boasted the steadily rising number of young adults attending college. In 1973, according to the Pew Research Center, only 24 percent of American citizens were enrolled in college, while 15.7 percent of the population had dropped out of high school; by 2008, the number of college students had risen to … Read more
[NEW YORK] Back in 1985, Williamsburg was a sleepy, poor part of Brooklyn inhabited by Jews and Hispanics who had long been at odds with each other. The area saw a decline in manufacturing, with crime on the rise. Today, one might find a major thoroughfare closed off for an art exhibition attended by hipsters … Read more
Driving in large cities is rarely pleasant. Roads can be so congested that traveling a single block takes several minutes and, after enduring all the other difficulties, finding a convenient parking spot is tough. In the past few months, two teams of entrepreneurs have released smartphone apps that they claim will make this process easier, … Read more
If states are, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, laboratories of democracy, then modern cities are laboratories of progressivism. From Baltimore to Seattle, New York City to Houston, American cities are aggressively taking on climate change, gay rights, and living wage ordinances at a time when state legislatures are sluggish and Washington is outright … Read more