Phoenix, Az. Traveling Companion: None Events: Long drive through a desert rain I’ve been enjoying the natural world, for a change, as I’ve been driving along, but things keep getting in the way. I was simply blown away by the eastern vista as I came down through Raton Pass into New Mexico–just a spectacular buff [...]
Presidents Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will deliver speeches at the United Nations General Assembly in New York Thursday, but it’s more interesting to note who isn’t speaking about Iran this week: critics of the Obama administration’s “dual-track” diplomatic approach to the Islamic Republic. These critics traditionally fall into three categories—American conservatives and neoconservatives, Israelis, [...]
House Republicans will unveil their “Pledge to America” at a hardware store in Sterling, Va., tomorrow morning. The GOP frames the document as a series of ideals, programs and policy blueprints it would uphold and pursue if restored to power in November. It’s also an attempt to neutralize Democrats’ charge that the “Party of No” [...]
NPR has sent around an excerpt from a “Talk of the Nation” interview with Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to early reports, Bob Woodward’s new book depicts Holbrooke as skeptical that Obama’s Afghanistan strategy can succeed. Holbrooke tells NPR that he’s going to “duck” any questions about the book until [...]
Our colleague Ishaan Tharoor has a new Time.com Q&A with Markos Moulitsas about the Daily Kos founder’s new book, “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.” You can read the whole thing here. The opening excerpt: You refer to a whole swath of U.S. conservatives as American Taliban. [...]
My colleague Jeff Kluger, who covers health and science, has penned an impassioned defense of the Affordable Care Act, inspired by his kids’ reaction to his recent outpatient surgery. An excerpt is below. Full piece here. Discuss. I had a bit of surgery last week. It wasn’t much — the kind of outpatient operation that [...]
As Adam notes, I have a Time.com piece up saying that the White House is preparing for Rahm Emanuel’s departure as chief of staff as soon as early October. There is no doubt that Emanuel now finds himself in a tight spot: Many of the class of 2006 that he helped get elected to Congress [...]
Being a difficult, occasionally bullying, intellectual powerhouse, Larry Summers has always drawn fierce attacks: political, personal or otherwise. And his time at the White House has been no different: whether for backers of outgoing CEA chief Christine Romer on the left or former OMB head Peter Orzag on the right, Summers became the touchstone for [...]
