Responding to Moses in Mecca, TTP member "Marco" has asked about the historical lineage of the ancient Philistines and their connection to modern-day Palestinians after whom they are named.  OK, Marco, here goes.

The origins of the Philistines are unclear.  Genesis 10:14 lists the Pelishtim as among the sons of Ham, shorthand for the Hebrews' traditional enemies which also included Egyptians and Canaanites, while Amos 9:7 claims they come from "Caphtor." 

At least two things about them are clear.  They are not aboriginal to the Levant (east coast of the Mediterranean) and they are not Semitic.

Hardly a week goes by without some Democrat Party hack putting finger to iPad and swiping out a screed about the Republican Party's problem with women or minorities.

This time it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz with "The GOP's Woman Problem." Schultz claims that the Republican Party was "rejected again by a bloc of voters that make up more than half of the electorate." That claim is as real as Schultz's hair color.

The Republican Party doesn't have a "woman problem." Romney in 2012 won the votes of white women in every age group; including young women. And Obama lost white women as he did all white voters.

He lost white voters by 59% to 39%. He lost white voters of every age and gender. His loss among white voters was completely unprecedented for any winner of a presidential election.

The GOP doesn't have a "woman problem," but the Democrats have a "white woman problem" and a "white man problem."

The articles about the GOP's problem with minority voters blame the Republican Party for alienating minority voters. But shouldn't the Democrat Party be held accountable for alienating white voters?

This is about more than just numbers.

Few express opinions different from what they are paid to say, and such is equally true for those who work for government. On an almost daily basis, the world is treated to presidential spokespeople denying what most people understand to be true.

Last week, Jason Furman, President Obama's chief economic adviser, who used to have a reputation as a competent economist, embarrassed himself by trying to deny - in response to a Congressional Budget Office report - that the president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would cost jobs.

All too many professionals are willing to ignore empirical evidence when it conflicts with their beliefs or those of their employers. Perhaps in no place do we see greater evidence of this than in the field of climate science.

If the climate scientists who produced their grossly defective, predictive models had been employed by private companies that depended on the accuracy of their predictions, they would have been fired.

Private economic forecasters who are consistently wrong tend to lose their credibility and at least some of their income.  There is one group of economic forecasters, though, who suffer very little loss of prestige or income, even though they may often be wrong. They are those who work for the Federal Reserve and other government agencies.

If you've seen the story all over the media about incoming Democrat Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Silvestre Reyes botching basic questions about Middle East politics, you've probably asked yourself - are these guys really that dumb?

Here's one way to answer the question.  Until he was tapped by President Bush to run the Security & Exchange Commission, Chris Cox (R-CA 1989-2005) was acknowledged for years to possess the most formidable brains on Capitol Hill.  There is absolutely no doubt - he is breathtakingly bright.

But when I tweaked him once about his reputation (I've known Chris since 1986 when he joined the legal counsel's office in the Reagan White House), he gave me a bemused smile and said, "Jack, being the smartest man in Congress is like being the tallest building in Topeka."

China’s leaders have brushed aside warnings of an incipient credit crunch in the Chinese economy, determined to purge excesses from the financial system despite falling house prices and the deepest industrial slowdown since the Lehman crisis.

Industrial production dropped 0.4% in August from a month earlier, a rare event that highlights how quickly China is coming off the boil. The growth of fixed asset investment fell to record lows.

“It is a shockingly sharp deceleration,” said Wei Yao, from Societe Generale. “What is surprising is the calm response from Beijing. The new leadership’s tolerance for short-term pain seems to have jumped by another big notch.”

Electricity output has dropped 2.2% over the past year as the authorities continue to force dinosaur industries into closure, chipping away at excess capacity.

New credit has fallen 40%, and there has been an outright contraction of trust loans and undiscounted bankers acceptances over the past two months, the result of a clampdown on parts of the shadow banking nexus.

Premier Li Keqiang has so far refused to blink, determined to drive through deep reforms and wean the economy off exorbitant levels of debt before the damage becomes irreversible. “We are restructuring instead of expanding the monetary supply,” he said last week, warning markets not to expect easy money to ignite a fresh boom this time.

But will he and his fellow Communist Party leaders keep not blinking?

Among the general public, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and their lesser known younger sibling, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have reputations far exceeding their actual achievements.

The OECD was originally set up as an organization to promote trade among the developed countries and to build statistical databases. It has now morphed into an organization whose principal goal appears to be the collection of more taxes for its member governments.

Last week, Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD, said it was the "duty" of international companies to stop employing tax-reduction strategies -- aiming some of his comments directly at Apple and Google.

Mr. Gurria seems to think the purpose of business is to pay taxes. Not so. The purpose of a business is...