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If Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker loses the election to recall him from office Tuesday, the political press will declare the arrival of Big Labor's comeback. If Walker wins, it will be seen as yet another sign of labor's demise. The election to recall the Republican governor, sparked by Walker's successful 2011 effort to end collective bargaining for public employees, has drawn participation from many different groups, including the tea party. But unions, which have long been fighting stories of their demise, have much of what's left of their reputation as powerful political organizers riding on the race. Union membership in 2011 fell to a record low for the second straight year, according to the Department of Labor, but that's not the only avenue in which unions have been struggling. Bill Schneider, a a senior fellow and resident scholar at centrist think tank Third Way, told Yahoo News that labor has lately experienced "tougher times winning" electoral race...

What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Paul Krugman Go to Columnist Page » Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal Related in Opinion Paul Krugman Blog: 1937 (June 3, 2012) More on the Economy » Connect With Us on Twitter For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT . Readers’ Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (925) » So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t...

As we’ve noted, the United States last month imposed unilateral sanctions on Libya, including a suspension of “all existing licenses and other approvals for the export of defense articles and services to Libya [1] .” The State Department had described the U.S. defense trade with Libya as “ very limited [2] .” Still, The Associated Press reported yesterday that in the months before Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi began a brutal crackdown [3] on anti-government protesters, the State Department had approved a $77 million deal to provide armored troop carriers that were highly sought after by the Qaddafi regime [4] : The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyan official told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif, both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigade reportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickup trucks, expressed a...