The Current Discussion: With Castro gone, will Cuba become America's 51st state?

The real question after Castro is whether Miami will now empty out, with all the Cubans there returning home. Time to sell Miami real estate?

But seriously, what is likelier to happen is threefold: first, a battle to control power, or rather to seize it from Raul Castro, whether by democratic or undemocratic means; second, a battle by commercial interests inside and outside Cuba to try to get the economy opened up in order to be able to realize huge potential gains in real estate and other assets; third, a battle for influence in post-Castro Cuba between Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and everyone else, most notably America.

Given the absurd and counter-productive economic embargo that America has imposed on Cuba for all these decades, this battle with Hugo Chavez is not one which America is in a great position to win. Perhaps it will, if Chavez overplays his hand and looks just like another imperialist from across the sea. But America needs to understand that it does not start with many advantages in this new game.

The Current Discussion: New York State governor Eliot Spitzer admits he hired a prostitute. Should people care, and why?

Eliot Spitzer should resign, immediately. Although a person's sexual behavior should by rights be a private matter, and irrelevant to his fitness for public office, that presumption of privacy must be overruled when the officer concerned has been acting to attack the very thing that he has been doing, namely prostitution. We do not expect our politicians to be saints. But when they are shown to be rank hypocrites, they are finished. Their credibility is gone.

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