Newsweek

Over the past several weeks Mexicans have become obsessed with what they believe is an American obsession that Mexico has become or could be on the way to becoming a "failed state." It began with a highly critical cover story about Mexico in a December issue of Forbes magazine, where for the first time the term "failed state" was applied to the country. Then came a memorandum written by retired general and former Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey in which he praised Mexican President Felipe Calderón's efforts… more

The Cuban revolution turned 50 years old last week, and its founder and undertaker was still around to celebrate the anniversary, though not in the best of health or spirits. This makes it a good opportunity to summarize what the revolution has brought to Cuba and what is has meant for Latin America.

"People are increasingly going for the maximalist version," says Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation. What changed? Since the recent Lebanon war, ...

... the maximalist version," says Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at Washington's New America Foundation. What changed? To start, Israel has begun to recognize ...

Former senator Tom Daschle furnished Obama with an entire Senate staff--his--and has served as the campaign wise man. Obama staffers from the Senate, such as Karen Kornbluh (domestic policy) and Susan Rice (foreign policy), will remain key players, even as the think tank Kornbluh was with--the centrist, market-oriented New America Foundation--gets layered by Podesta's more traditional Democratic types. LINK

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget just revised its "Promises, Promises" guide, and now says Obama's tax and spending proposals – in the unlikely event that Congress enacted them unchanged – would add anywhere between $262 billion and $316 billion to the federal deficit in 2013, the final year of the next president's first term. The CRFB has increased its estimate of the likely cost of Obama's health care plan and now figures it could cost anywhere… more

Over the past few weeks, some silly ideas have circulated on the impact of the financial crisis on Latin America. The most dangerous was that Latin America would be largely impervious to a debacle that was, as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva imprudently phrased it, "Bush's crisis." Leaders ranging from Mexico's Felipe Calderón on the center-right to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez on the extreme left all claimed, for different reasons, that orthodox macroeconomic policies, recent growth, solid banking systems, the high price of commodities (oil,… more

Truth, they say, is the first casualty of war. But it hasn't even made it onto the battlefield of economics in this presidential election. Asked about how the global meltdown will change their priorities, the candidates demur; asked how they will call on the American people to sacrifice, they dodge. Asked to tell us how they see the world in 2009, they punt. "It's frustrating and dangerous, because neither candidate is building the credibility that comes from candor," says Maya… more

In 2003, administrators at Stanford University's Electrical Engineering Department were startled when a group of foreign students aced the notoriously difficult Ph.D. entrance exam, getting some of the highest scores ever. That the whiz kids weren't American wasn't odd; students from Asia and elsewhere excel in U.S. programs. The surprising thing, say Stanford administrators, is that the majority came from one country and one school: Sharif University of Science and Technology in Iran.

Stanford has become a favorite destination of Sharif grads. Bruce A. Wooley, a former chair of the… more

...Experts expect the GOP to lose between four and seven seats in the Senate and 10 and 20 seats in the House--giving the Democrats their largest majorities in a generation. And John McCain hasn't led Barack Obama in a single poll since May 3.

Enter Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. Named by David Brooks of the New York Times as "two of the most promising" of "an emerging "group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers," they're editors at the Atlantic Monthly… more