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Colombia has announced it is negotiating with China to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America. The plan is to create a "dry canal" where the Pacific port of Buenaventura would be linked by rail, across Colombia, to the Atlantic Coast. Trade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year. The announcement came from the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, who told the Financial Times that the project was "a real proposal... and it is...

Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The name of the company and other details have yet to be released, but the opposition congressman Luis Callejas said the government planned to grant a 100-year lease to the Chinese operator. The national...

Nicaragua's parliament is due to vote on Thursday on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Latin America's history – a trans-oceanic canal that is to be built and run by a Chinese company. If it goes ahead, the $40bn (£26bn) scheme, which is twice as expensive as Brazil's Belo Monte dam and likely to be three times longer than the Panama canal, looks set to transform global shipping and jump start the economy of this Central American nation. As well as the waterway, the draft agreement between Nicaragua and a Hong Kong registered firm — Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment...

PANAMA CITY, Panama - President Bush voiced his support on Monday for expanding the Panama Canal to allow bigger ships and more cargo to pass through the shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Bush said Panama must acknowledge that the 50-mile waterway "is to be used by everybody, that the canal is international, that there ought to be ... equal access." Panama is studying plans for widening and deepening the canal that could cost nearly $10 billion. The project must be approved in a national referendum, amid concerns about the environmental impact and the heavy debt involved. White House...

In Walter Lippmann's book "Public Opinion", a very interesting comment is made: (page 294) It was economic government by anybody's economic philosophy, though it was supposed to be controlled by immutable laws of political economy that must in the end produce harmony. It produced many splendid things, but enough sordid and terrible ones to start counter-currents. One of these was the trust, which established a kind of Roman peace within industry, and a Roman predatory imperialism outside. People turned to the legislature for relief. They invoked representative government, founded on the image of the township farmer, to regulate the semi-sovereign...

In his book "The conservation of natural resources in the United States", Charles Van Hise writes the following: (Page 337, section: "Conservation and Patriotism") The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during the natural resources of the country were being taken possession of, were naturally times of intense individualism. Each man took freely of the resources, did with them as pleased, and regarded interference from any source as unwarranted. But the private possession of our resources placed a new situation before us and demands of the people the twentieth century different ideals from those that obtained in the past. If you happen...

In April 2010, Glenn Beck interviewed Paul Ryan. Ryan is someone who from what I've heard, understands correctly the history of progressivism because he lives in Wisconsin, and as he says he grew up seeing the dangers of it. Wisconsin(as many people have come to know) is the birthplace for Progressivism proper. Here are a couple of great quotes from him: PAUL RYAN: So people can actually see what this ideology means and where itÂ’s going to lead us and how it attacks the American idea. , (shortened): PAUL RYAN: this(progressivism) is really a cancer because it basically takes the...

It's long been known that Theodore Roosevelt was influenced by the book "The Promise of American Life", as well as Croly's other writings as he himself makes clear in the essay "Two Noteworthy Books on Democracy. What is questioned is to what degree, how it happened, and if the slogan "New Nationalism" itself is a direct lift. On page 169 is where Croly uses the phrase. In the New York Independent, the following is written: (Page 957, this was originally published in 1912) The New Democracy resembles in some points Croly's "Promise of American Life," from which Colonel Roosevelt got...

Not long ago I made an entry titled "Woodrow Wilson absolutely hated the principles of the Founding Fathers", well, I am no fan of any progressive. They are all dangerous to me. So Wilson attacks the founding and I'm going to call it as it is. The same is said for Roosevelt. Progressivism is America's cancer and it's not just in one party. I came across an article on The Heritage Foundation titled "Progressivism: Still Dangerous After All These Years, which is primarily about Roosevelt. In it, they highlight one of the things that came out of Roosevelt's pie hole:(Direct...

On front page of website, no registration required.Shockingly, neither Carter nor the present occupant of the White House are choices...

Want to be looked at by government like a farm animal? If your stock isn't good enough, perhaps we could just sit people in front of the politburo and force them to justify their existences. Doesn't sound good to you? Would it be too far to go out on a limb and say that Theodore Roosevelt would've agreed with the notion? In his letter to Charles Davenport, people's stock being 'farmed', is exactly the notion he advances. You can read the letter here, but I would much prefer you listen to it. Youtube link. (Also, Popmodal. But the audio doesn't...

when you're talking about Glenn Beck now he actually, the other day, called you a progressive on FOX Business channel. What do you say to that sort of claim?" Gingrich: "I don't know. It depends on what standard you're using, you know? The fact is I balanced the budget for four consecutive years. And we did so by cutting taxes and increasing employment so people went back to work, they left welfare, they left food stamps, they left unemployment, they left Medicaid. Who else has that record of achievement? I worked with Reagan in '79, '80. I worked with Reagan...

From the Despair of the Present, a Great Society will Arise By Ari Bussel I often recount the story of where I used to bank. At one point they considered us the fastest growing company in their portfolio, and we were treated like royalty. All the fake elements were there, including fascination, envy, need to extol and become close. None real or long lasting, they would all change in a heartbeat. We were customers of that bank for many years, and I expected to be treated no differently than in years past or future. Little did I know that the...

We have a pretty good idea of what the NFL’s next play will look like, however. A kicker will boot the ball from the 35-yard line, most likely for a touchback. That’s because on March 22, the NFL changed the rules, moving kickoffs forward from the 30-yard line. It hopes to reduce the risk of injury during what is often the most harrowing play — enormous men colliding in an open field at full speed, like beat-up cars in a high-stakes demolition derby. As a student, Roosevelt attended one of the first Harvard-Yale games. Football has fallen under intense scrutiny...

THE MAN IN THE ARENA Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic”, delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910

It's been 100 years since Mark Twain died, after declaring, "If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there." Wherever he is, a century later, the words and stories he left behind live on . . . > ...President Theodore Roosevelt is "one of the most impulsive men in existence" . . . the American soldiers Roosevelt sent to the Philippines Twain called "uniformed assassins" . . . and then there's his Italian landlady, who's "excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, and obscene" . . . and that's just for starters. > ...our...

Yesterday, I visited DC's memorial to the 8th Republican president. In contrast to Barack Obama, Theodore Roosevelt did not consider himself above, or better than, the American people. Roosevelt would have agreed with Tea Party activists who refuse to be silenced by the Democrat media: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt still speaks to Republicans today: "Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural...

James Bradley’s incendiary new book about Theodore Roosevelt is not really packed with secrets. Much of the material it discusses has long been hidden in plain sight. But Roosevelt biographers often subscribe to certain orthodoxies, and one of them is this: When Roosevelt made noxiously racist and ethnocentric remarks about Anglo-Saxon greatness, so what? He was just voicing the tenets of his time. Mr. Bradley, the author of “Flags of Our Fathers,” does not simply cite Roosevelt’s egregious talk. He presents this much-ignored aspect of Roosevelt’s thinking with sharp specificity (“I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic...

On this day in 1901, President William McKinley (R-OH) died of a gunshot wound inflicted by an assassin eight days before. As he faded away, he recited the words of a popular hymn: "Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone. Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God to Thee. There in my Father’s home, safe and at rest, There in my...

It is remarkable that Theodore Roosevelt (TR to his friends), who has been beloved as an iconic patriot and president, would become a controversial figure today. This unusual development is largely due to the rise of Glenn Beck. Glenn has been right on many issues and his views are resonating with Main Street. But he is wrong on one big issue: Theodore Roosevelt is not, as he claims, the root cause of President Obama’s intrusive, “big government” policies. It is no accident that TR’s face is chiseled into Mount Rushmore along with those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham...