Unqualified Offerings

I’ve been tagged.
If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why? (Assume you also get baseline superhero enhancements like moderately increased strength, endurance and agility.)
Ooh, tough. Best of all I like the acrobats, and yet how could you turn down flight? Nevertheless, I’ve gotta go with superspeed, particularly if I get all [...]

I’m getting mighty tired of adult superhero comics fans speaking in the name of generalized “kids.” The irksome current example is Websnark’s recap and plumbing of the DHM of the most recent Justice League Unlimited episode, and how it is both a metacomment and exemplar of the tragic condition that the classic superheroes just aren’t [...]

Okay, Catallarchy can really, nontrivially use some friendly liberal guidance now. Micha Ghertner and other Cato interns have been selected as Team Blue for an internal debate with their bosses about the wisdom of government subsidies for alternative fuels research. Micha et al have to take the pro side. They’ve got a decent start, and [...]

US and Russia quash probe into Uzbek massacre.
Iranian terrorist group under control of US suspected in Iranian bombings.
A couple of reactions: The Uzbek deal is really inexcusable. If you have a “forward strategy of freedom” but feel nervous about your basing rights in a – how shall we put this – forwardly unfree nation, then [...]

I hear much about the Islamist desire to restore the Caliphate. The original Caliphate stretched from the Caucasus across North Africa and across Gibraltar to the Pyrenees.
How big, rich and powerful could a restored Caliphate get? That is, how successfully could one run an imperial state based on Islamist principles? Assume a ruling class akin [...]