[Tim McGrath] Remembering James Monroe, last president to die on Independence Day

In the fall of ’16, Americans elected a presidential candidate with a well-deserved reputation for partisanship. Once inaugurated, he surprised his countrymen by seeking to end party politics and usher in a time of unity among Americans rarely seen in our history.Obviously, we’re not talking about 2016.No, this was in 1816 and that president was James Monroe. He and President Trump share little in common. Trump graduated from military school at 18 and compared it to actually being in the militar

July 4, 2017

[Other view] A tax battle for Congress to settle

We all know brick-and-mortar stores are failing left and right, victims largely of the national shift to e-commerce. One big disadvantage of the physical stores, besides having to pay for infrastructure and the staff to run it, is that they have to collect sales tax and their online competitors generally do not.And that means another big loser in the evolving digital world is state government, which is losing lots of tax revenue. States have been having to contend with the 1992 Supreme Court cas

July 4, 2017

[Andres Oppenheimer] Latin America has surplus of talent, shortage of innovation

Amid the bloodshed in Venezuela, the corruption scandal in Brazil and the stream of bizarre tweets coming from President Trump, a very important news item has gone almost unnoticed in Latin America: A new study says the region is failing miserably in innovation.The Global Innovation Index 2017, a ranking of 130 countries around the world, says that African, Eastern European and Southeast Asian countries are doing much better than Latin America when it comes to modernizing their economies and pro

July 3, 2017

[Francis Wilkinson] A law to deter violence that won’t

Legislation is often reactive. Crime rises and in response legislatures fund cops, prosecutors, prisons. A high-rise burns and a new law requiring fire-retardant construction materials is readied.Kate’s Law is both reactive and proactive. Named for Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old American who was shot dead in July 2015 in San Francisco, the House of Representatives passed the legislation Thursday. The bill would raise maximum sentences for immigrants caught entering the US illegally, with the penalt

July 3, 2017

[Other view] Supreme Court’s travel ban decision creates new confusion

Monday’s US Supreme Court decision to allow a limited version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban to proceed until the court rules on the full case this fall was not a “clear victory for our national security,” as the president claimed in a triumphant tweet.Instead, it amplified a damaging message in the US and abroad, undercutting efforts to counter violent extremism. The ban targets six mostly Muslim nations -- Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. That fact betrays American values

July 3, 2017

[Leonid Bershidsky] Sweden’s smart idea for reducing global killing

Sweden is about to take a bold step: Its government wants to be the first in the world to impose legislative curbs on selling weapons to undemocratic regimes. If other big arms exporters did the same, fewer people would die in senseless wars.Sweden is the 12th biggest arms exporter in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with 2016 exports worth $1.2 billion. Many in the country’s powerful civil society have long protested against sales to repressive regim

July 2, 2017

[Sebastian Johnson] Case for universal basic income

By now you will have heard rumblings of the policy idea known as “universal basic income.” This is the notion that the government should give every citizen enough no-strings-attached money to cover basic living expenses.In the last year alone, Mark Zuckerberg called on Harvard’s graduating class to “explore ideas like universal basic income,” Elon Musk told a gathering of world leaders in Dubai that “some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary” and President Obama remarked that

July 2, 2017

[Ed Feulner] Cost of waiting to drain the swamp is high

"Drain the swamp!" It was the battle cry of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.Many Republican members of the US Congress echoed that call as well, riding it to victory -- and control of both legislative chambers.The American people rallied around the cry because it reinforced their impression of what Washington had become: a swamp infested with special interest groups and power-hungry bureaucrats.They rallied, too, because it held the promise of getting our country back on track -- by reformi

July 2, 2017

[Other view] ‘Clean Coal’ will always be a fantasy

"Clean coal," always dubious as a concept and never proved as a reality, has now failed as business proposition. Southern Co. has decided to stop work on a process that would have captured carbon dioxide emissions from a coal plant in Mississippi.Giving up on the project, which was nearly $5 billion over budget and three years behind schedule, makes sense for Southern‘s customers and shareholders. And giving up on carbon capture makes sense for the energy industry. The technology is too expensiv

July 2, 2017

[David Ignatius] Is war between China and US inevitable?

Let’s imagine a Chinese “applied history” project, similar to the one at Harvard’s Belfer Center that helped spawn professor Graham Allison’s widely discussed book “Destined for War.”Allison’s historical analysis led him to posit a “Thucydides Trap” and the danger (if not inevitability) of war between a rising China and a dominant America, like the ancient conflict between Athens and Sparta chronicled by the Greek historian Thucydides. A study by the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project ident

June 30, 2017

[David Ignatius] The global politics of selfishness

Here in the capital of Iraqi Kuridstan, the mood is “Kurdistan First” with the announcement of a referendum on independence in September. In neighboring Saudi Arabia, it‘s “Saudi First,” as a brash young crown prince steers the kingdom toward a more assertive role in the region. In Moscow, where I visited a few weeks ago, it’s “Russia First,” with a vengeance. And so it goes, around most of the world.The politics of national self-interest is on steroids these days. For global leaders, it‘s the “

June 29, 2017

[Kai Bird] When ‘October surprise’ conspiracies come true

We Americans love conspiracies. They are like good spy stories: entertaining, intriguing and tantalizing. But historians learn to hate conspiracy stories. The evidence is often circular, circumstantial and infuriatingly slippery. And usually, the simplest explanation — not the conspiracy theory — turns out to be the best.In my first biography, “The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment,” about the influential Wall Street lawyer and perennial presidential advisor,

June 29, 2017