David Frum

Barack Obama is foreign.

Oh yeah? Mitt Romney is a bully.

Think the U.S. presidential election will be about the economy? Think again.

On the economy, both presidential candidates are marked with indelible vulnerabilities.

President Obama first. He inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He has presided...

Israeli governments often have collapsed before their term ended. Benjamin Netanyahu's government is doing something almost unheard of in Israel: voluntarily scheduling an election much earlier than necessary. Elections were not due until 2013. It seems very likely they will be held on September 4 of this year instead.

Why...

The rioting students of Quebec got scant sympathy even before they started smashing windows and detonating smoke bombs.

Polls suggest that Quebecers generally support Jean Charest government's plan to raise tuitions in small increments over the next five (and now possibly seven) years. Even when all the increases are phased...

They came to mourn Christopher Hitchens yesterday in the Great Hall of New York's Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln gave the speech that launched his campaign for president in 1860.

The hall was filled by family, friends and readers; intimates of 40 years' standing and those who knew him only...

You could learn a lot about Canada's national psyche from the country's enduring fascination with the battle of Vimy Ridge, fought 95 years ago this past week.

Canadians fought dozens of major battles during the First World War. Yes, Vimy was the most tactically spectacular: one of the best-planned, best-executed...

Under Stephen Harper, Canada can fairly claim to be the best-governed country in the advanced democratic world. Thursday's federal budget locks up Canada's lead.

Right now, the major economies share a common economic problem: With the world slowly and fitfully emerging from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, they...

Four years ago, black Americans mobilized to elect one of their own president of the United States. When asked, the overwhelming majority of black Americans still say they support Barack Obama. But the old enthusiasm has dwindled.

The economic crisis of 2008 hit black America hard, and the recovery since...

Over the past 100 years, the world has seen the creation of some 100 new states -- perhaps more states in a shorter period than ever before in the history of the world. Most of those new states have not proved very successful. But there is one among the states...

An important milestone contained in Friday's U.S. jobs report:

This month, for the first time, President Barack Obama can say more Americans are working than were working on the day he took office (using the more reliable figures for seasonably adjusted numbers).

With state and local government payrolls...

Will Barack Obama strike Iran -- or agree to an Israeli strike -- to stop the Iranian nuclear program?

This week, the U.S. president offered his most detailed answer to date, via an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly. The piece is headlined: "As President of the United...

Gasoline prices are rising in the United States -- always bad news for an incumbent president.

Accordingly, President Barack Obama travelled to Miami to repeat his energy message, which can be summed up as follows: Help is on the way. The U.S. government is investing in new energy technologies --...

The Iranian regime's war against its own people threatens to claim another casualty: Canadian landed immigrant Saeed Malekpour, sentenced to death for the crime of designing a website.

The Iranian regime is moving to carry out the sentence imminently, adding one more killing to the...

The recently released results from the 2011 Canadian Census read very different in French and English.

In English, the census tells a story of growth and prosperity. In French, the census announces the decline of Quebec's standing in Confederation -- and of the French language's place in North America.

Lester...

Canadians dislike it when the American political system pays Canada no attention. This election season, Canada may face an alternative: too much attention.

In the midst of his victory speech after the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich inserted a shout-out to Canada. After blasting President Obama for halting the Keystone...

I've written before about Canada's important new historical journal, the Dorchester Review. Now they have published a second issue -- and I am doing it again.

This opening paragraph from one of the current issues essays nicely conveys why the Dorchester Review matters so much.

The myth of...

The story of 2011? The crisis in the Euro.

Of all the events of the year, this is the story that carries the most direct danger or hope to the most people. If regarded as a single economy, the Eurozone is larger even than the economy of the United States....

We hear a lot about the war on Christmas. But the true seasonal struggle is the war within Christmas, a single holiday shared by two deeply antagonistic religions.

Religion one is the religion of Jesus Christ, the figure whose birth the holiday commemorates.

This religion emphasizes universal grace and forgiveness.

Who doesn't love Hanukkah? Presents and fried potatoes, all conveniently timed to mitigate for Jewish children the pain that Santa does not love them.

And yet have you considered what a weird holiday it is?

Eight days of festivities because ancient Jews discovered a cruse of unusually long-lasting oil?...

A friend of theirs once took Christopher Hitchens and his wife Carol Blue to dinner at Palm Beach's Everglades Club, notorious for its exclusion of Jews.

"You will behave, won't you?" Carol anxiously asked Christopher on the way into the club. No dice. When the headwaiter approached, Christopher demanded: "Do...

Last month, the RCMP announced that it had found no basis for further investigation of Treasury Board President Tony Clement.

In 2010, a former Liberal MP had asked the RCMP to examine spending in Tony Clement's Muskoka riding. The former MP claimed that the spending on projects to...