LAS VEGAS — A pair of hand-knit slippers, adorned with a Mormon symbol. A tiny stack of yard signs. An autographed Ron Paul placard. And a wadded, used tissue, tucked in a candidate’s pocket. Nevada had its strange moment in the political spotlight this week, as stage-managed campaigns roared through with rallies and TV ads. This was faux intimacy, done in a city where faux is a fact of life: The casinos are named after Paris and New York, and the dust-dry streets around them are named, aspirationally, for trees and oceans. Read full article > >

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Gifts and pocket fillers on the campaign trail

Haunting the political landscape is the ghost (or soul or spirit or memory or image, depending on how you see these things) of Gabriel Michael Santorum. Born at 19 gestational weeks, too young to live outside the uterus, Gabriel died within two hours. Read full article > >

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For Santorums, personal tragedy turned political

MOSCOW — Don’t expect Moscow-style protests in Kazakhstan, the big Central Asian country on Russia’s southwestern border, even though elections there are also approaching, the political system is similarly regulated and a violent conflict last month left at least 16 dead. The party of President Nursultan Nazarbayev is expected to win the Jan. 15 parliamentary elections easily and by whatever percentage he desires, his critics say. And what exactly happened when striking oil workers were killed Dec. 16 in the city of Zhanaozen remains unclear: Earlier this week Nazarbayev extended the state of emergency there until the end of the month, limiting communication with the outside world. Read full article > >

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Unlike Russia, Kazakhstan keeps a tight lid on protests ahead of elections

The only danger about people like me and Ed saying Ron Paul can never win is that it fuels his anti-establishment cred. Paul has two bases of support: a libertarian base that likes Paul for his consistent purism on stripping government of all but extremely limited powers and a really angry base that is more about creating chaos than philosophy. This second group would like nothing more than to send a giant message of anger to the political establishment, and Paul is a good vehicle for that. Read full article > >

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Ron Paul’s un-electability will be his undoing

Opposition leaders hoped Saturday’s demonstration would mark an end to years of quiet acceptance of the political consolidation that Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin introduced.

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Huge Moscow Rally Suggests a Shift in Public Mood

WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to end per-country caps on worker-based immigration visas, a move that should benefit skilled Indian and Chinese residents seeking to stay in the United States and the high-tech companies who hire them. The legislation, which passed 389-15, was a rare example of bipartisan accord on immigration, an issue that largely has been avoided during the current session of Congress because of the political sensitivities involved. Read full article > >

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House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

The 2008 election was a reminder of the demographic forces that are changing America and potentially the political balance in the country. The most diverse electorate in the nation’s history added to the favorable winds that pushed President Obama to victory. He will need the assistance of those shifts even more in 2012 if he is to avoid defeat. Read full article > >

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Will demographic shifts save Obama in 2012?

With the Congressional deficit-cutting committee’s inability to compromise, Americans say they are losing faith in the political system.

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Disgust, but No Surprise at Supercommittee Failure

BALI, Indonesia — Burma seemed poised for a historic shift Friday as dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi ended her long boycott of the country’s authoritarian political system and President Obama announced plans to send the U.S. secretary of state there for the first time in half a century. The back-to-back announcements were the clearest sign yet of how seriously the Obama administration and Suu Kyi — the standard-bearer of Burma’s long- persecuted democracy movement — are taking the political changes instituted by the country’s leaders. Read full article > >

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U.S. sees Burma reforms as strategic opening to support democracy

Recent anticorruption protests have stirred India’s middle class, which has benefited most from growth, but remained disengaged from the political system.

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India’s Way: India’s Middle Class Appears to Shed Political Apathy

INDIANAPOLIS Richard Mourdock , a Republican and Indiana’s treasurer, wants to wrest his party’s U.S. Senate nomination from a six-term incumbent who has been a national figure since becoming mayor of this city in 1968 at age 35, who has averaged 69 percent of the vote in five reelections and who ran unopposed by a Democrat in 2006. When Richard Lugar , an Eagle Scout and Rhodes scholar, was a naval ensign, he briefed Dwight Eisenhower. That was 10 presidents ago, which may be a problem for Lugar in an era of pandemic disparagement of the political class. So Mourdock will try to defeat Lugar with wounding praise: Lugar is a great chapter of Indiana history, but elections are arguments about the future. Read full article > >

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Richard Lugar, the unlikely target of conservatives

Across the political spectrum, residents of Homs, Syria, speak of a recent shift, from a largely peaceful uprising to a struggle that has made the city violent, fearful and determined.

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Homs, Syria, Spirals Down Toward Civil War

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama on Wednesday hailed the popular revolutions that have transformed the political landscape of the Middle East and urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to revive talks toward a difficult peace. In the third address of his presidency to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama acknowledged that he is frustrated by lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, but he stressed that there is “no shortcut” to ending the conflict, and he called for understanding of each side’s “legitimate aspirations.” Read full article > >

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Obama tells U.N. he sees ‘no shortcut’ to Israeli-Palestinian peace

The tea party movement came into public consciousness sometime in the early months of President Obama’s tenure in the White House. Ever since, it has been an object of fascination, fear, scorn and admiration. It has also been the object of misunderstanding. The tea party was described as the new kid on the block of American politics, when in fact it was the extension of forces long at work in the political system. Read full article > >

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What the tea party is — and isn’t

Ten of the 12 members of the so-called debt reduction “supercommittee” represent districts or states that went for President Obama in 2008 – a reflection of the political concerns that will be paramount when lawmakers meet in the coming weeks. None of the 12 members have immediate concerns about their political futures in the 2012 election – at least right now – but a few of them have reason to be watching their backs as they advance with what is likely to be a tortuous and tricky political process. Read full article > >

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Obama voters are well-represented on debt reduction ‘supercommittee’