Juan Cole

As the US Supreme Court rules on the universal health care plan, it is worth considering that all of a sudden the courts are playing an outsized role in the aftermath of the fall of the dictators in the Greater Middle East. One of the concomitants of the outbreak of parliamentary democracy in the Greater […]

Well, we dodged the bullet of looking like Zimbabwe on this issue. But we still need a single payer system. And the court exempting states from medicaid expansion could leave millions uninsured. (From this site, though I made some changes; China, e.g., at least tries to provide health care to its citizens; and Iraq is […]

Weather is specific events, climate is the long-term pattern. Catastrophes like the forest fire in Colorado that has expelled 32,000 people from their homes are the results of weather. But long-term climate change can increase the likelihood of such events. That is, we may have a big, wet snow in Colorado some winter in the […]

The Atlantic Council and The Project on Middle East Democracy are worried about the drift in Obama administration policy on Yemen, about the lack of attention to urgent development and humanitarian issues there, and about the indiscriminate use of drones, which are likely to do more harm than good. So they did up a five-page […]

The Republican Party is trying out a “who lost Egypt” line of attack against President Barack Obama, in the wake of the victory in the presidential election of Muhammad Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many in the Republican Party are attempting to cast the Muslim Brotherhood as a danger to the US on […]

Part of a National Geographic segment on the Nile crocodile and its prey: