With Mitt Romney prepared to hunt down attackers in Libya, maybe we should clue in to how that country has reacted to the deadly assault on the US consulate in Benghazi. First of all, the newly elected Prime Minister has been given a vote of no confidence, which in Libya as in most Parliamentary democracies triggers the collapse of the government:

Alan Simpson is upset that somebody besides those with the accumulated wealth of a Pete Peterson gets a voice in our democracy: SIMPSON: I get so damn sick and tired of listening to the little guy, the vulnerable, the veteran — I am a veteran, and the seniors and this and this and this and [...]

I’ve tried really hard to avoid this brouhaha over Conor Friedersdorf’s article on why he refuses to vote for Barack Obama. It’s probably generated far more discussion than it merited, since it amounted to an unsurprising statement of support for a libertarian candidate from a right-leaning civil libertarian. That liberals pounced on it as an example of Naderite perfidy, though the circumstances are quite different, is something that I found revealing of liberals, and this post can stand in for my thoughts there.

As we learn more about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the probability that the militants involved were retaliating for a drone strike that took out a top al-Qaeda leader who happened to be Libyan. Christopher Chivvis puts this in context. As details [...]

Libyans headed to the polls today for the first time in over 40 years, electing a national assembly that will play a caretaker role, while a Constitution gets written and the country moves forward in the wake of the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi. Voters risked violence to vote in the elections, where thousands of candidates [...]

European leaders met in Brussels yesterday, and even going in it was clear that the countervailing forces, exemplified most by Germany and France, would not come to any agreements. And that’s just how it turned out: A major rift has opened up between Germany and France for the first time in 30 months of euro [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Kudos to Rachel Maddow and her team for almost making me want to watch cable news again with this story about how Michigan Republicans are subverting the legislature to put laws into effect immediately rather than waiting until the next calendar year. The [...]

In the last two countries the United States invaded, Afghanistan and Iraq, officials subsequently set up parliamentary and not republican forms of government, with a unicameral Parliament rather than a bicameral legislature. Afghanistan does have a Presidential system and is thus somewhat closer to the US form of government, but the President in Iraq is [...]

As we wind down the overt military phase of the Iraq war, I think this article carries some important knowledge. In Iraq as well as Afghanistan, the way out of the country has been to train native security forces to take over. We trained hundreds of thousands of security personnel in Iraq, and just as [...]

In the wake of the news that “Islamists” have won the first round of the Egyptian elections, I’ve seen a lot of lazy writing from people who know better. They’re either saying that this proves revolutions don’t work or offering some light fearmongering about scary Mooslims. Let’s look at this more closely. First, “Islamist” is [...]

If nothing else, the #occupywallstreet protests, happening in the heart of the world’s financial center, have forced elites to reckon with their own precarious position. The New York Times does the honors today, connecting the protests to other uprisings around the globe, and making a subtle (and also wrong) point that there’s something anti-democratic about [...]