Category: News

The New York Times‘ Bill Keller wants Hillary Clinton to replace Joe Biden on the Obama re-election ticket, but a better, likelier choice by far is available—one Newton Leroy Gingrich, reputedly a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination but

Chronicles is very sad to report that our friend and longtime contributor Tom Landess has passed away of a sudden illness.  A true man of letters, Dr. Landess wrote (and ghostwrote) hundreds of books and articles, as well as poetry.  

In what The Washington Post called “a bold act of political defiance,” President Obama Wednesday announced the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Cordray’s nomination had been blocked by a Senate filibuster. There was

Too bad Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket last weekend. If the divine hand that laid low the North Korean leader had held off for a week or so, Kim would have been sustained by the news that President Obama had

Half a century ago, American children were schooled in Aesop’s fables. Among the more famous of these were “The Fox and the Grapes” and “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

Particularly appropriate this Christmas season, and every Christmas lately, is Aesop’s

This Christmas let us spare a thought and say a prayer for countless Christian victims of Muslim brutality, over the centuries and in our own time.

An explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas Mass near Nigeria’s capital Abuja

Kim Jong-il, the North Korean “Dear Leader” (as well as  Secretary-General of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, etc, etc.) is dead at 69. The

Day Six

December 23, 2011.  Thousands of Sunni Muslims in Samarra, Ramadi, Baiji, and Qaim have taken to the streets.  Many of them carry signs and banners protesting the Shi’ah-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki and expressing support for threatened Vice

For the Army and Marines who lost 4,500 dead and more than 30,000 wounded, many of them amputees, the second-longest war in U.S. history is over. America is coming home from Iraq.

On May 1, 2003, on the carrier Abraham

It’s been some years since Tom Fleming and I have indulged in seven-day mad dashes across the Balkans, speaking, lecturing and giving interviews, meeting interesting people over good food and drink. Last week’s tour, which took us to Belgrade and

On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan.

A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S.

Srdja Trifkovic’s paper on Russia and the European Media, delivered at the conference “Russia and Europe: Issues of Contemporary Journalism,” Paris, November 24, 2011

Most West European media professionals tend to subscribe, consciously or not, to a neoliberal world outlook

Addressing the annual congress of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Leipzig on November 14, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for further political integration within the European Union as a means to ending the sovereign-debt crisis. “The task of our

Is a vote for the Republican Party in 2012 a vote for war?

Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as

Silvio Berlusconi has been around for so long that it is hard to imagine Italian politics without him occupying the center stage. The end of his era is nigh, however, to the relief of his opponents as well as many

I went to vote this morning, at a new polling place.  I was directed to the polling place by a sign that was in both Spanish and English.  When I was handed the ballot, I saw that it, too, was

Yes, yes, curse the defensive genius and pedophile* Jerry Sandusky (author of Touched) and Coach Joe Pa (who continued to employ him).  But what about the grad assistant who happened to lock eyes with ol’ Sandusky when the

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to call off the referendum on the EU-brokered rescue plan may look like a sign of weakness. Not so. The wily Socialist has forced the opposition to get off the fence and declare its

When Herman Cain made his irrelevant 9-9-9 tax plan a focal point of the current political debate, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich were quick to shout out their ‘Me too!’ Perry’s 20% flat tax, pulled out of the magic hat

For two decades now, Pat Buchanan has been warning us of the dangers our country faces.  When he first started sounding the alarm, at the end of the Cold War, those dangers were hard to perceive.  Now, they are hard

I know it is none of my business.  If the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth wish to change the rules of succession to the crown, I have no right to an opinion, not only because as an American  I have

There will be no Greek default—not for months to come at least, as we predicted here two weeks ago. The private banks that had splashed out on ostensibly lucrative Greek bonds will have to accept a “haircut” of fifty

Eight years ago when George Bush and his advisers decided to invade Iraq, the only moral or legal justification they could dream up was Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of “weapons of mass destruction.”  At the time, I derided this claim,

In Federalist 2, John Jay looks out at a nation of a common blood, faith, language, history, customs and culture.

“Providence,” he writes, “has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the

New on the Daily Mail.

My stopover in Brussels on the way to the Balkans last week proved less than illuminating on the issue of the eurozone crisis and Greek debt. The real decisions are made further east, in Frankfurt and Berlin, but the EU 

Pose a threat to the stability of Saudi Arabia, as the Shiite upsurges are now doing in Qatif and al-Awamiyah in the country’s oil-rich Eastern Province, and you’re brandishing a scalpel over the very heart of the long-term U.S. policy

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Observing the correlation of forces in this city and the intensity of conviction in the base of each party, the outcome of the ongoing fiscal fight between Barack Obama and the Tea Party Republicans seems preordained.

Deadlock. There will

Wednesday, at a meeting with Hispanic activists, President Obama vowed to keep pushing for what he calls “comprehensive immigration reform.” The “reform” Obama wants is one that will enable illegal immigrants to become legal residents, and that will place no

Talking to CKCU 93.1FM in Ottawa, Dr. Srdja Trifkovic considers the extraordinary readiness of the government in Belgrade to compromise Serbia’s national and state interests in order to demonstrate its subservience to the “international community.”

A recent batch of Wikileaks

Siracusa: Sunday, 25 September 2011

We’ve been in Siracusa since Friday evening.  My wife, Christopher Check, and I, accompanied by our young friend and board member Mark Atkins, are checking out the site of our next Winter School, and there

Last Saturday, at United Russia’s congress, the ruling duumvirate of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin finally ended the uncertainty of some months’ standing. Putin first asked Medvedev to head United Russia’s list at next December’s Duma election.

Monday, September 19

The big noise is, again, President Obama’s job’s plan that will require a tax on the rich, the so-called “Buffet Plan.”  Now, I’d be ticked pink if all the Warren Buffets of America could be taxed out