Latest Article from Judith Miller

Of Presidents, power and the press

May 23, 2013  •  New York Daily News

Dropboxes. Disposable cell phones. Encryption technology. Is this what American journalism has come to?

James Goodale, the former New York Times general counsel who ran the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, says that the Justice Department's secret seizure of reporters' phone and email records and its use of official press passes to track reporters' movements in government buildings make President Obama's record on press freedom worse than President Richard Nixon's.

But we live in a very different, far more dangerous time than the America of Watergate. Protecting the nation post-9/11, when the world's worst people seek to obtain the world's worst weapons, means taking aggressive measures.

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Latest Article from Clifford May

Black Swans, Icebergs, and Benghazi

May 23, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

"Humans are great at self-delusion," the polymathic philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb has observed. I'm confident he'd agree that the humans who populate the foreign-policy community are no exception.

Two years ago this month, Osama bin Laden was killed on President Obama's orders — a very good thing. Before long, however, sophisticated analysts were declaring that this was not just a battle won — it was a war ended.

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Latest Article from Jeff Stier

Activism vs. The Rule of Law

May 22, 2013  •  Defining Ideas; Hoover Institution

In May of last year, the New York Times did something extraordinary: On the front page, the paper not only ran a photo of a Massachusetts woman in flagrante delicto committing multiple federal and state felonies and civil torts, but also identified her and the scene of the crime. You would think an ensuing investigation and prosecution would be a slam-dunk, but federal regulators and law enforcement officials have been nowhere to be found.

The crimes? This woman and other activists were defacing food labels to "warn" consumers about alleged dangers of genetically modified foods.

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Latest Article from Timothy Spangler

French Wrestle With English Language

May 22, 2013  •  Creators Syndicate

Sacre bleu!

French intellectuals and politicians are coming to grips this week with an awkward fact: The English language is the de facto global standard in an increasing number of areas central to modern life. The French language, by contrast, is beginning to look a little provincial.

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Latest Article from Soeren Kern

Switzerland: Multicultural Paradise?

May 21, 2013  •  Gatestone Institute

A controversial new report by the Swiss government claims that Muslim immigrants are so well integrated into Swiss society that no further federal policies or programs are needed to promote Muslim integration or to counter Islamic extremism.

Published by the Swiss Federal Council [Bundesrat] on May 8, the 102-page study -- known by the short title, "The Situation of Muslims in Switzerland" -- so completely downplays the countless problems associated with Muslim immigration in Switzerland that the report has been ridiculed as being worthy of a "case study in political correctness."

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Latest Article from Michael Freund

Storming the Bastille of Israel's religious bureaucracy

May 21, 2013  •  The Jerusalem Post

This past Sunday, a press conference was held in Jerusalem which may yet come to signify the start of a revolutionary change in the provision of religious services in the Jewish state.

Speaking to reporters, Religious Services Minister Naftali Bennett and Deputy Minister Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan announced a series of long-overdue reforms that will, for the first time, introduce elements such as competence and competition into the country's moribund system of religious councils.

Sure, no smell of gunpowder was evident, nor did anyone break out into a rendition of "I dreamed a dream" from Les Miserables, but the storming of the Bastille of Israel's religious bureaucracy is most assuredly underway.

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Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

How Iran Benefits From an Illicit Gold Trade With Turkey

May 17, 2013  •  The Atlantic

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has arrived in Washington, D.C. for a much-anticipated summit with President Barack Obama. The timing of the visit -- amid reports of chemical weapons usage in Syria and an attack against a Turkish border town by alleged Syrian agents -- will make it hard to talk about anything other than the civil war in Syria.

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Latest Article from M. Zuhdi Jasser

We Should Have Heeded the Warning Signs of Islamist Antisemitism

May 17, 2013  •  The Jewish Press

With the rise of Islamist regimes following the Arab Awakening, we are seeing an increase in religious repression across the Middle East. That repression was predictable had we only read the tea leaves of Islamist antisemitism.

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Latest Article from Michael Rubin

Erdogan's Agenda

May 16, 2013  •  National Review Online

Later today, President Barack Obama will sit down with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office. It will be a friendly reunion. Obama has said Erdogan is one of the few foreign leaders with whom he has developed "friendships and the bonds of trust." Speaking to the Turkish parliament four years ago, on his first trip abroad as president, Obama declared, "Turkey is a critical ally. Turkey is an important part of Europe. And Turkey and the United States must stand together — and work together — to overcome the challenges of our time." These challenges are many — among them, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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Latest Article from Tevi Troy

review of Two Presidents Are Better Than One

May 27, 2013  •  The Weekly Standard

There is no doubt that the American presidency is an imperfect institution and that it has been inhabited by imperfect people. Given these incontrovertible facts, political scientists have long sought ways to improve the presidency. Some want to make it more powerful, others less. Some want us to pursue a parliamentary-style system, while others have argued for allowing more to be done by executive fiat. Professor David Orentlicher of Indiana University has come up with an original but almost certainly unworkable approach: He wants to split the presidency in half.

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Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Turkey To America: Step Up In Syria

May 15, 2013  •  U.S. News & World Report

This week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives in Washington for a much publicized state visit. The Turkish leader won't simply be making a courtesy call, however. His U.S. mission is largely aimed at achieving one purpose: goading the Obama administration into taking greater action on Syria.

That's something of a tall order. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March of 2011, the United States has steadfastly avoided joining the fray – or even crafting a coherent strategy toward the conflict taking place between Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his own people. This inaction has made the White House the object of withering criticism at home and abroad, but to little avail (at least so far).

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Latest Article from Asaf Romirowsky

Asia is Becoming Israel's New Frontier
Here's Why

May 14, 2013  •  Forbes

When we think of Israel, we usually think of the Middle East (its neighborhood), North America (its close ally the United States) and Europe (the long history of Ashkenazi Jews). Rarely do we think about Israel and Asia, even less about Asia as Israel's new frontier. We don't think of Asia as playing any significant role in Israel's evolution given the tiny Asian Jewish population, the lack of significant Jewish history in Asia, and minimal relations between Israel and most Asian countries for the first 40 years (1948-1988) of Israel's existence.

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Latest Article from Clare M. Lopez

Time to Derail the Saudi "Visa Express"

April 29, 2013  •  Gatestone Institute

One of the more striking—and worrisome—aspects of the April 2013 Boston Marathon terror attack and the cross-border al-Qa'eda/Iran plot to bomb a passenger railway that runs between New York City and Toronto, Canada is the realization that all four suspects so far identified in the two plots had entered legally into the United States and Canada, respectively. Crossing legally into Western countries targeted for terror attacks, entering immigrant and refugee streams without drawing attention from security services, and blending into existing multicultural communities while establishing personas indistinguishable from those of tens of thousands of other new arrivals, appears to be a tried and true modus operandi for Islamic jihadis. It definitely worked for the fifteen of nineteen 9/11 hijackers who were Saudis.

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Latest Article from Lee Harris

Sympathy for the Devil

April 27, 2013  •  The American

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, Americans are again searching for motives. It is our way of dealing with acts that shock and outrage our collective sensibilities. We looked for motives after the Oklahoma City bombing and after 9/11. We looked for them in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, when we asked ourselves what motive a young man could have to kill first graders. But what exactly are we doing when we go in search of a motive for such crimes?

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