The full consequences of a default - or even the serious prospect of default - by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill ( Read more... )

The official unemployment number came out today: 9.7%. our average prediction was 9.9%. Last month's rate was 10.0 ( Read more... )

Here's a listing of all the famous questions people came up with, along with their origins (except for a couple Google was not able to find for me). (In order of them being mentioned in the comments ( Read more... )

To see how radical our establishment consensus in this area has become... look at the Terrorism policies of what had previously been the most right-wing administration in America's history: the Reagan administration... Terrorism by Islamic radicals had been a greater problem in the 1980s than it is now. There was the 1983 bombing of our Marine ( Read more... )

I wondered what would happen if I looked at the correlation between unemployment and presidential approval/disapproval ratings, having claimed in a number of comments this last year that the economy is the super-dominant factor in the mood of the country right now and, implicitly, generally how the country views a President.

( Wonder no more )

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to ( Read more... )

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