U s

China will almost certainly pass the United States in the total size of its economy within a decade or so. But if one looks also at military and "soft power" resources, the U.S. is likely to remain more powerful than China for at least the next few decades. Does it matter? When nations worry too much about power transitions, their leaders may overreact or follow strategies that are dangerous. As Thucydides described it, the Peloponnesian War - in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart - was caused by the rise in the power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta.

Patriotism isn't easy. Just ask L.A.'s garment makers. Three years after combining their names to create Venley, a company that produces T-shirts and other basics in a downtown Los Angeles factory, onetime fraternity brothers Nick Ventura and Kevin Gressley find manufacturing clothes in the U.S. to be an expensive and frustrating undertaking. Like many other apparel executives in the U.S., the pair pay more than the minimum wage, Ventura said. Sometimes, the same amount of money Venley shells out for locally made fabric gets Wal-Mart Stores Inc. an entire outfit sewed abroad.

ARDMORE, Pa. - Wednesday was a beautiful day at the Merion Golf Club. Soft clouds, perfect temperature, gently cooling breezes. It was also the day before the U.S. Golf Assn., the diabolical mastermind of the U.S. Open, hands 150 players blindfolds and offers each a final puff on a cigarette. The 113th edition of this annual golf agony is meant, as always, to make the greatest golfers in the world feel as if they are wearing starched underwear. Mike Davis, executive director of the USGA, summed up nicely Wednesday morning.

Less than two weeks ago, Juergen Klinsmann, coach of the U.S. national soccer team, was under fire. His team had been embarrassed in a one-sided loss to Belgium, he couldn't settle on a consistent lineup and there were rumors of dissension within the team's ranks. All that's gone now. Because with Tuesday's 2-0 win over Panama -- the most complete game the U.S. has played in Klinsmann's two years at the helm -- the Americans have taken control of their regional qualifying group for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, a tournament that kicks off exactly one year from today.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday proposed extending tough new protections for chimpanzees in captivity, a shift that would place strict limits on primates' role as human surrogates in biomedical research. In reclassifying chimps as endangered, the agency would put new requirements on the declining number of scientists who rely on chimpanzees to devise vaccines for infectious diseases, develop treatments for cancers and autoimmune diseases, and investigate ways to block dangerous pathogens that might jump from primates to humans.

Robert Fogel, the University of Chicago economic historian awarded a Nobel Prize for his data-driven reconsiderations of how railways and slavery influenced U.S. economic history, has died. He was 86. Fogel died Tuesday at Manor Care Health Services in Oak Lawn, Ill., after a brief illness, according to the university's Booth School of Business. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Fogel and Douglass North of Washington University in St. Louis the 1993 Nobel Prize in economics "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.

WASHINGTON - The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who took over the agency in its meltdown with the Fast and Furious gun-tracking scandal, ran into opposition Tuesday when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration as permanent director. Disturbed by allegations that B. Todd Jones had mismanaged his other current role as the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, Republicans said they hoped to block or delay his appointment until an internal investigation into his leadership of that office could be completed.

WASHINGTON - The massive leaks about U.S. spying systems caused sharp political and legal aftershocks Tuesday as the Justice Department prepared to file criminal charges against Edward Snowden, a government contractor who has publicly admitted disclosing highly classified telephone and Internet data-gathering operations. The vast scope of the government surveillance sparked the first federal lawsuit challenging its legality, a bipartisan effort in the Senate to declassify secret court orders that authorize the operations, and requests from Google and Facebook for permission to disclose more about National Security Agency requests for users' emails and other online communications.

ARDMORE, Pa. - There were no priests in black robes, no curtained booth to slip into, no screened window to talk through. But Sergio Garcia, star golfer currently suffering the aftereffects of foot-in-the-mouth disease, had it different than those who preceded him Tuesday to pre-U.S. Open news conferences. Sergio's was a confessional. Bless me, everybody, for I have sinned. He didn't have to come in. A U.S. Golf Assn. official confirmed that. But he knew, as did the USGA, that it was the right thing to do. And to his credit, Garcia did not try to brush through it, did not duck questions, nor do the common athlete non-apology apology.

The U.S. economy is improving, yet Congress seems still to be in the grip of the delirium that shrinking the deficit in the near term is still a matter of paramount urgency. That's what's prevented lawmakers from dealing with their real task, which is to jolt the miserable jobs recovery into a higher gear and lift the budget sequester, one of the outstanding examples of mass insanity the country has ever seen. Consider the sequester as exhibit A. That's the package of mandated budget cuts enacted as part of the deal to raise the debt limit in 2011.