EU

The European Union passed a new round of Iran sanctions on Monday, targeting the Islamic Republic’s vulnerable financial, shipping, and bank sectors.

The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the European Union (EU), was lauded by the Norwegian selection committee for having “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Among various attainments, some decades in the past and others arguable, the Norwegians also praised the EU for its purported achievements in the Balkans, in a manner that appears simply dishonest.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has given this year's award to the European Union. The committee explains in a press release:

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is to be awarded to the European Union (EU). The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.

Birmingham, England

Birmingham, England

September 12 was a momentous day for Europe. It saw three separate events that in a powerful way may come to remake the European Union.  First, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that the nation’s parliament can ratify a new, permanent rescue fund for the eurozone, called the European Stability Mechanism, to the tune of some $645 billion in taxpayer money. The European Union would have been forced into an immediate financial crisis of unprecedented magnitude had the court declared the bailout illegal.

It’s always bloody Europe. It was Europe (specifically, Tory splits over Britain’s relationship with the EU) that finally did in Mrs. Thatcher, and it did in poor John Major too. Now it is beginning to look like David Cameron might eventually go the same way, felled by the issue he has tried to dodge since becoming party leader in 2005. To borrow his phrase from the following year, “banging on” about Brussels was over. Saving the planet was in.

A new chart, set to be released later today by the minority office of the Senate Budget Committee, finds that, in the next five years, "U.S. Per Person Debt To Increase 7 Times Faster Than Italian Debt."

This business with Greece goes on and on, and one begins to think, automatically, of Sisyphus and his rock. Only in this case, you start pulling for the rock.

Martin Taylor, chairman of Syngenta and a former chief executive of Barclays, has written a thought provoking article about the perilous state of the European economy in the Financial Times. He observes that while most of the world is quick to blame bankers, the problem is also that European leaders need to make some unavoidable and tough decisions:

The Hill: "Dick Armey: Gingrich campaign turned into 'first-rate vendetta' against Romney"

Las Vegas Sun: "Economic woes, anti-Obama sentiment fail to draw large turnout"

Cancel the competition. Mark Steyn has already won the "best-article-not-in-THE-WEEKLY-STANDARD-to-appear-in-2012" award. Read his "The Sinking of the West."