Kim Jong-il's death perforce marks a turning point in modern Korean history. Not since Douglas MacArthur’s push toward the Yalu has the future of the North Korean regime been as uncertain as it is today.

There are some ideas that, no matter how often they rise and how spectacularly they fail, just won't go away. Perpetual motion machines, for example. Passive exercise machines. Diets that work. These technologies sound great in theory, but don't seem to pan out in practice. Add to the list, electric (or largely electric) cars.

Congress will once again put off a huge cut in Medicare payments to physicians, but that will not solve the underlying problems of fee-for-service payment.  

Both the U.S. and the UK should extend that period of time as much as possible to remove the specter of immigrant welfare use.

The Obama administration and Western governments may embrace democracy for Libya, but rhetoric is not enough. Obama must make a fundamental choice: Which is more important, democracy in the process of reconstituting a new government or democracy as the result?

Why did Obama's first jobs plan--the $825 billion stimulus--so quickly result in the need for another jobs plan? The economy would have benefitted far more if the government had instead improved the incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and grow. The President probably won't mention any of this, but it does explain why he has to give his latest speech.

Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan has done the political equivalent of committing ritual suicide to atone for the sins of being a failure. Japan now has a dead prime minister walking, the fifth in as many years. Does any of this matter? It's getting harder for Japan specialists to assert that it does.

Elizabeth Warren is again at the center of a political controversy. Despite her insistence that she is part Cherokee, based upon “family lore” and her observation that some in her family had “high cheekbones like all the Indians do,” she has failed to produce any concrete evidence to substantiate her claim.