As summer approaches, many families are beginning to plan where they will travel and in which hotels they will stay while on holiday. For some 900 people in the New York City area displaced by Hurricane Sandy, hotels have been their only home for more than half a year. That aid program looks to continue, according to The New York Times, by the order of a judge. That is just one way to count the toll that extreme weather events are taking on the U.S.

Out today is a new study from the Consensus Project that shows the overwhelming scientific consensus is that climate change is real and is caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

America’s competitiveness keeps taking blow after blow. Congress and the White House run headlong willingly into political skirmishes over these issues while ignoring the big, strategic challenges that will shape America’s security and prosperity well into the 21st Century.

On Monday, May 13, ASP hosted Della Mae, the Boston/Nashville-based all-female bluegrass band which recently returned from an American Music Abroad tour of Central Asia.

In a time of historic political clashes and a fight over spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the nation’s military, it is easy to miss the little things. A great example is the risk run by the Defense Department when it comes to the future of the defense industrial base and, in particular, the sourcing of so-called rare-earths metals.

The stupidity of Congress’ actions should not excuse military and civilian leadership in the Department of Defense from making the important investments into the future; it is strategically important for the military to develop new sources of energy like biofuels.