Las Vegas Sun

The most vital region in this world today, for U.S. interests at least, remains a maze of cloud-shearing piles of rock and sweeping valleys, both checkered by impoverished towns and men clutching AKs-- but this pile is hundreds of miles from Kabul.

Bill O'Reilly supports a public option in the health care debate, given that it will provide cheaper insurance to those who can't afford it and isn't intended to replace insurance providers as the status quo for the majority; Tommy Thompson, W.'s secretary for Health and Human Services and a former four-term governor of Wisconsin, has praised the Senate's proposed reforms.

As your fifth grader heads back to school this morning, weighed down by a rushed bowl of Cheerios and an oversized bag of worn books, how would you like to know that his or her science teacher has 30 years of experience, and spent last year as a special consultant to the state of Arizona? Or that his or her gym teacher shaped Kobe Bryant into 225 pounds of pure muscle?

And how would it feel to know that those teachers would be paid between $125,000 and… more

The young, aspiring Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia's seventh congressional district launched what looked like an exciting effort to recast his party last winter. It began in a packed strip mall pizza parlor in Arlington with the aim of engaging regular Americans with an Obama-style outreach both on the Web and in town halls. It has fizzled and failed.

This is not a new clash; what the world is watching in Tehran is yet another chapter of Islam grappling with modernity, democracy and lucrative financial cronyism.

The Taliban’s siege in the Swat Valley presents a major opportunity for Pakistani President Asif Zardari, one he’s taken an important first step toward grasping, but one that can also slip away quite easily.

The Swat has been pounded since last week by 15,000 Pakistani troops beating back Taliban fighters. Heavily armed helicopters, mortars and jets have bombarded the lush terrain, inflicting 700 Taliban casualties, according to the state’s interior minister, and displacing 400,000 people.

The Taliban’s siege in the Swat Valley presents a major opportunity for Pakistani President Asif Zardari, one he’s taken an important first step toward grasping, but one that can also slip away quite easily.

The Swat has been pounded since last week by 15,000 Pakistani troops beating back Taliban fighters. Heavily armed helicopters, mortars and jets have bombarded the lush terrain, inflicting 700 Taliban casualties, according to the state’s interior minister, and displacing 400,000 people.

I love to shoot guns as much as the next red-blooded American -- hunting rifles at home in Vermont with friends, Glocks in Pittsburgh with cousins; I understand the excitement and the rush and the eventual calm that shooting enthusiasts so enjoy. But at no point in my life have I ever felt compelled to carry or own a gun.

Since Barack Obama has taken office, gun sales across America have surged. Firearm purchases under a Democratic president appear absolutely recession… more

In 10 years books on the financial collapse will lead with facts about China. Eventually, the text will get around to explaining that failed oversight in American markets brought the implosion to its height, but the thesis of the narrative will center on the success of tightly managed macroeconomics, massive internal investment, and revisions made to an already successful system in a time of great turmoil. China, in short, will be the winner among losers when we look back upon these years of unrest.

A recent survey suggests 37 percent of Britons expect riots in the next year on account of the financial collapse; in Kiev, Ukrainians have made runs on major banks, being turned away from even the nation's largest institutions with empty pockets.

The European Union is ripping apart at its most vulnerable seam: that between well-established Western economies and former Soviet states still grappling to build viable capitalist systems.