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Taiwan heads to the polls in what is seen as a referendum on its relationship with China

“Taiwanese voters, for the first time, are voting between two candidates that have completely different visions of what Taiwan’s relationship is with China and the world,” said Shirley Lin, Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia.

Syaru Shirley Lin

Many more criminal indictments under Trump, Reagan and Nixon than under Obama, Clinton and Carter

A Facebook post claimed that there have been 317 criminal indictments in the administrations of three recent Republican presidents — Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon — and only three indictments under three recent Democratic presidents — Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Ken Hughes

Some facts in the movie ‘The Irishman’ are in dispute. Was that Baltimore concrete plant for real?

“The book is fictional," said Kenneth J. Hughes, historian with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. "There’s no real reason to believe it. That said, Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ is fictional too. And it’s great. And ‘The Irishman’ is a great movie too.” (Full disclosure: This reporter worked with Hughes at the Miller Center years ago.)

Ken Hughes

Op-Ed: Will Taiwanese voters choose closer ties with China over democratic freedoms?

As Taiwanese voters prepare to go to the polls Saturday to elect their next president, they are choosing between two candidates who take fundamentally different positions on an issue whose implications go far beyond Taiwan: how to preserve a country’s democracy and freedom while maintaining economic relations with a neighboring giant that wants to subsume it.

Syaru Shirley Lin