The Last Culture Warrior: Why Mike Huckabee will lose, and what it means for evangelicals →

A look at the rise and fall of Evangelical political sway, and Huckabee's history within it:

Mike Huckabee is running for president. He will not win. But when he inevitably bows out of the Republican primaries, it will only be one more loss in a greater, longer defeat in America's culture wars.
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The fact is that Huckabee is a candidate who has outlived his time. The days of just kings and their trusty prophets have passed, as has the era of TV pastors achieving influence beyond the (admittedly daunting) reach of the Oprah Winfrey Network. Evangelicals are frightened and angry and looking for the sort of president who will protect them from the onslaught of the world around them, which is still rapidly changing. Huckabee, with his folksy charm and church basement coffee-talk demeanor, was their preferred protector in 2008, and perhaps always will be. But he won't get anywhere near the White House.

Ben Carson Is No Herman Cain →

Carson’s announcement speech was light on substance, but it’s clear he doesn’t stray far from the rest of the Republican pack. He’s opposed to Obamacare, of course; called for an end to social programs that “create dependency”; and told supporters, “It’s time to rise up and take government back.”
With that said, there is one important difference between Carson’s rhetoric and that from the rest of the presidential field: It’s in the paranoid style...
Can Carson turn this paranoia into votes? Probably. If he makes it to the Iowa primaries, he’ll almost certainly find support from a portion of the electorate. But there’s no chance that he’ll go beyond a modest showing with social conservatives to win a contest or even the nomination. At most, he’ll harm a more mainstream Republican, like Sen. Ted Cruz, who needs to win as many voters on the right as possible. And after that? The former hero to black Americans will likely fade from view, as another fringe candidate running another vanity campaign.

Why the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review is depressing →

So what resources can the State Department throw at a problem? The bottom of page nine in the QDDR stood out for me:
In an era of diffuse and networked power, and with federal funding constrained, our diplomats and development professionals must focus on strengthening partnerships with civil society, citizen movements, faith leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, and others who share our interests and values. For example, partnerships with mayors will be increasingly important, as nearly 60 percent of the world’s population will live in urban environments by 2030...
Great googli moogli, that’s a lot of partnerships for a lot of variegated issues. And “partner” is the word that is shot through this QDDR (though it’s used even more frequently in the 2010 QDDR). In essence, Foggy Bottom is acknowledging that in a world of constrained funding, the best it can do is leverage its meager resources by acting as a focal point for sub-state and non-state actors.
The State Department is hardly the only agency to find itself with strict budget constraints. And as Beauchamp notes, “A massive amount of government work involves identifying huge problems … and then trying to implement a few small-bore strategies to chip away at the big problem.” That’s certainly what the QDDR is designed to do. But even if it was a pie-in-the-sky exercise, it would be interesting to hear what the State Department could do with more resources.

The quiet global crisis that scares the State Department →

A big new State Department assessment has identified a major threat to global security. It's not ISIS or Vladimir Putin. It's not a rickety global economy or climate change or the threat of global pandemics.
Instead, the report argues, these individual problems are symptoms of a much bigger issue — namely, a slow breakdown in global governance. Many of the institutions that were created in the past century to deal with economic and security risks around the world, such as the UN and IMF, may no longer be adequate to the task.

But they do exist: they may be a foundation or model for what we need next.

Fracking Chemicals Detected in Pennsylvania Drinking Water →

One study, three homes. Still...

“This is the first case published with a complete story showing organic compounds attributed to shale gas development found in a homeowner’s well,” said Susan Brantley, one of the study’s authors and a geoscientist from Pennsylvania State University.
The industry has long maintained that because fracking occurs thousands of feet below drinking-water aquifers, the drilling chemicals that are injected to break up rocks and release the gas trapped there pose no risk. In this study, the researchers note that the contamination may have stemmed from a lack of integrity in the drill wells and not from the actual fracking process far below. The industry criticized the new study, saying that it provided no proof that the chemical came from a nearby well.

Our Police Union Problem →

FOR decades now, conservatives have pressed the case that public sector unions do not serve the common good.
The argument is philosophical and practical at once...
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In an irony typical of politics, then, the right’s intellectual critique of public-sector unions is illustrated by the ease with which police unions have bridled and ridden actual right-wing politicians. Which in turn has left those unions in a politically enviable position, insulated from any real pressure to reform.
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The cases from all over the country where unions and arbitration boards have reinstated abusive cops make for an extraordinary and depressing litany. Baltimore is no exception. Last fall, The Baltimore Sun reported on the police commissioner’s struggle to negotiate enough authority to quickly remove and punish his own cops, and the union’s resistance to swift action and real oversight persists.