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Latest Article from Clifford May

The Worst of Time

September 2, 2010  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Henry Luce would have been mortified. The founder of Time magazine believed Americans had a responsibility to stand up to the enemies of freedom and democracy. He saw the 20th century as "the first great American Century." He would have wanted the United States to lead in the current era as well.

Now Time has hired Fareed Zakaria, who is perhaps best known for The Post-American World, which, he insists, "is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else."

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

Mideast Peace Talks' Hidden Threat

September 1, 2010  •  Politico

Some 46 percent of Israelis believe that President Barack Obama is "pro-Palestinian," according to a Smith Research poll this summer. Since then, that figure most likely has ticked higher. After all, in July, the president upgraded the Palestinian delegation's diplomatic status in Washington, and the peace talks that start Thursday are designed to lead inexorably to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state by the end of his first term.

Supporters of Israel bitterly assert that Obama has done more for the Palestinians than any other president in history. But they may be wrong. Obama may not yet know it, but the new peace talks could single-handedly destroy the Palestinian cause.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Jeff Jacoby

'Clunkers' was a classic government folly

September 1, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

IN THE MARKET for a used car? Good luck finding a bargain: The price of "pre-owned" vehicles has climbed considerably over the past year. According to Edmunds.com, a website for car-buyers, a 3-year-old automobile today will set you back, on average, close to $20,000 -- a spike of more than 10 percent since last summer. For some popular models, the increase has been much steeper. In July, a used Cadillac Escalade was going for around $35,000, or nearly 36 percent over last July's price.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Herbert I. London

Assemblywoman Jacobs and The Death of New York

August 31, 2010  •  TownHall.com

Rhoda Jacobs is a Democratic Assistant Speaker of the New York State Assembly representing a district in Brooklyn. She, like many of her colleagues, puts a premium on constituent service. In fact, that is her calling card and her campaign mantra.

In most respects she employs her position to help those in her neighborhood and does so with understandable campaign goals in mind. For Ms. Jacobs governing and campaigns are indistinguishable, a condition she shares with her Assembly brethren.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from M. Zuhdi Jasser

New York Times and CNN miss critical analysis of overhyped Muslim counter-radicalization video

August 27, 2010  •  The Daily Caller

The New York Times, CNN, and other "mainstream media outlets" recently reported on a video that was put out by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) on July 15, 2010. According to MPAC, it was "compiled with the assistance of ISNA (Islamic Society of North America)." The organization says that the video is "part of MPAC's broader effort to work with a diversity of respected leaders and communities to tackle the issue of violent extremism head on."

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Michael Rubin

Why Najaf matters in post-war Iraq

August 27, 2010  •  The Washington Post

The last U.S. brigade combat team departed Iraq on Aug. 18. While President Obama says 50,000 U.S. troops will remain there through December 2011 to train the Iraqi army, in reality the U.S. units are focused more on packing up tons of equipment. This is so, as one colonel explained to me this month, "we can shut the lights out and close the door behind us."

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Pundicity

Latest from Frederick M. Hess's Blog

Why I'm Feeling Sorry for Sec. Duncan

August 26, 2010 at 10:05 am

Since its inception, I've regarded Race to the Top (RTT) as an important and valuable idea, but I also spent much of last fall and winter arguing that the administration's program design was not equal to the weight it was being asked to bear (what with its murky criteria for judge selection, ambiguous scoring system, focus on promises and grant-writing rather than accomplishment, and the remarkable emphasis that Secretary Duncan placed on union "buy-in" in round one).

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Soner Cagaptay

Hair today, prime minister tomorrow

August 24, 2010  •  Monocle

Turkey has nearly a year to go before it holds elections, but one outcome seems certain: the country's next prime minister will wear a moustache.

Over the past two decades a streak of hair between the nose and upper lip has gone from a sign of manhood to a class symbol. Until the early 1990s, almost all Turkish men had one, whereas today the moustache belongs to those only in the lower-middle and working-class neighbourhoods known as varos. These concrete-heavy boroughs unattractively encircle all of Turkey's cities, monuments to a period of massive industrialisation and urban migration.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Raymond Ibrahim

Is Newt Gingrich Wrong to Talk About Sharia?

August 24, 2010  •  Pajamas Media

In a recent article appearing in Tablet, Lee Smith takes former House speaker Newt Gingrich to task for the latter's focus on sharia (i.e., Islamic law).  The thrust of Smith's argument is that sharia is a "hopelessly abstract concept" and "a highly idealized version of reality that has little basis in fact"; that sharia is "a catchall phrase for legal principles that have rarely, if ever, existed in actual Muslim societies"; and that "the notion that something called 'sharia' was widely imposed throughout the lands of Islam is an Orientalist fantasy."

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Judith H. Dobrzynski

No More "Cathedrals Of Culture"
Museums Aim To Be "Town Squares"

August 24, 2010  •  The Wall Street Journal

Over breakfast one recent Saturday, Kaywin Feldman, the director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, recalled a moment years ago at a meeting of the Association of Art Museum Directors. Then in her mid-30s, one of association's youngest members, and director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, she proposed a session on museums and the environment. "I was told it was irrelevant," she says.

By June of this year, when the AAMD met in Indianapolis for its annual meeting, the association had caught up with her thinking: Not only was a session devoted to making museums "greener," but Ms. Feldman was elected president.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Pakistan's Madrassas Need Reform

August 23, 2010  •  Washington Times

The furor accompanying the recent dissemination of classified military files by WikiLeaks has focused some much-needed attention on the damaging role Pakistan plays in the Afghan theater. As the WikiLeaks documents highlight in damning detail, Islamabad's close - and ongoing - cooperation with the Taliban has made it a key accessory to the worsening insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition on the war on terror's first front.

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Pundicity

Latest Article from Judith Miller

Hanging by a thread
As Iraq war formally ends this month, country is still struggling for stability

August 22, 2010  •  New York Daily News

The American fast-food chains are long gone from Camp Ramadi in Anbar Province. So, too, are the Iraqi souvenir stores near the "D-Fac" - that's army talk for "Dining Facility."

This camp, a flat, forsaken military base in a scorching desert on the outskirts of Anbar's capital, once among the most dangerous places in Iraq, has shrunk to less than a quarter of its original size.

More than half of the makeshift barracks in flimsy trailers now stand empty behind the thick cement T-walls that protect against explosives. Vehicles, too, are hard to come by. Many of them, along with transport helicopters, translators and high-end communications equipment, have been shipped to Afghanistan, President Obama's "essential" war.

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