Oh please, please, please... According to other Republicans, some in the party establishment are so desperate to change the dynamic that they are talking anew about drafting Romney — despite his insistence that he will not run again. Friends have mapped out a strategy for a late entry to pick up delegates and vie for … Continue reading Today in things I badly want but don’t deserve

This is still very much a developing story, but ISIS has claimed responsibility for a double suicide bombing (which may actually have been intended as a triple suicide bombing, based on the latest evidence) today in the Beirut neighborhood of Burj al-Barajneh, which has killed at least 37 people and injured over 180 more: The … Continue reading ISIS hits Beirut

It's no secret that the American-led anti-ISIS coalition is planning an assault on the groups "capital," the Syrian city of Raqqa -- in fact, it's so unsecret that the US Secretary of Defense has talked openly about the plan in front of Congress. A force of mostly Kurds, along with a group of Arab fighters … Continue reading The assault on Raqqa is taking shape, in Iraq

The fall of Kunduz was a big moment for the Afghan Taliban, coming as it did after the announcement of Mullah Omar's death and his replacement by Mullah Akhtar Mansour, a guy who was believed to have something less than total support among the whole Taliban organization. Even though the Taliban abandoned Kunduz not long … Continue reading Afghanistan: dealing with the Taliban, ISIS, and the, ah, other Taliban

Last night Marco Rubio said something factually incorrect about welders and philosophers: During the fourth Republican debate, Marco Rubio picked up a point touched on by Rick Santorum in the undercard debate earlier in the night. "Welders," Rubio said, "make more money than philosophers." Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler looked at the idea, but we … Continue reading Facts actually do matter

It isn't often that you'll see me unabashedly defend Tayyip Erdoğan over anything, but here goes nothing. There was a story in Al-Monitor last week that said that Erdoğan is under a little fire from Turkish secularists over a Ministry of Education plan to start offering Arabic electives to elementary school students as of the … Continue reading The politics of teaching foreign languages in Turkey

Here's me, trying to make some sense of the AKP's stunning electoral turnaround: Turkey has suffered through a violent summer and early fall. The government has blamed two major terrorist attacks, in Suruc in July and in Ankara in October, on the Islamic State. A series of smaller, more targeted attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ … Continue reading Turkey’s election results, my latest at LobeLog

This discovery is still too new for any serious theories to have developed about it, but in case you haven't noticed a) I like writing about Ancient Egypt and archaeology and b) unexplained thermal anomalies in Egyptian archaeological sites is kind of a recurring theme around here lately, so I figured I'd flag this latest … Continue reading That must be where they stored the grain