Apparently, Obama wants to name CNN’s talking-head neurosurgeon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as Surgeon General. Gupta is an accomplished surgeon, Emory University medical professor and award-winning journalist, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the tsunami in Sri Lanka. He’s also not totally unpolitical, having served as a …
Flying While Muslim, the Prequel
Last week we read about a Muslim family that was removed from an Air Tran flight because of “inappropriate comments” that in fact are similar to questions many newbie flyers ask, regardless of age, race, or religious background.
Now comes news that an Iraqi blogger and U.S. resident has been awarded $240,000 in a lawsuit stemming from …
Hold On, It’s Worse Than You Thought
According to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, everything is “faster, heavier and more likely to collide.”
ALSO: While the galaxy may be much bigger than we knew, Paul Krugman fears that the stimulus, which will be a number followed by 11 or 12 zeros, is going to be too small to work. He does a bunch of math, and then …
Burris Drama
For all that Obama has been winning praise for his relatively smooth transition (okay, Richardson and Panetta aside), Dems must not be loving the side show Blagojevich has created. In fact, as one observer put it to me, “the clowns have taken over the circus — all three rings of it.”
Today’s spectacle of Burris being turned away by …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Yet Again With the Nazis
Very bad, if inevitable, news from Gaza today: the Israelis accidently hit a UN school, killing at least 30 children. This will, no doubt, increase international outrage…and, I hope, pressure for a cease-fire. As Swampland readers know, I supported the Israeli effort to diminish Hamas’s military capabilities–but the most valuable …
In the ArenaUncategorized
COIN of the Realm
Foreign Policy magazine seems revivified in 2009, with a new roster of bloggers–including the estimable Tom Ricks–and some interesting articles in its Jan/Feb edition. I’d especially recommend this look at how the counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics that helped turn around the situation in Iraq can be applied to Afghanistan, by two of our …
The Loser Now Will Be Later To Win
Another moment of reflection on the occasion of Al Franken’s apparent victory in the Minnesota Senate race: This nation has had former star quarterback pols, a pop singer Congressman and a Hollywood actor president. The old counter-culture of the 1960s long ago went mainstream. Even Robert Gates, the man picked by President Bush to lead …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Stimulation
The talk this morning is all about the tax cuts included in Barack Obama’s stimulus package, which is understandable, but also a bit misleading. Some of my colleagues are acting as if the $1000 tax break for families with incomes under $200,000 is some sort of surprise or shocker–interesting, since Obama promised it in every single …