During a press gaggle on Air Force One today, White House press secretary Bill Burton said that national security advisor Tom Donilon woke the president at 3:55 am with the news of North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island. Two thoughts: First, this may be the closest we’ve come to the infamous “3 [...]
The most interesting political struggle in Iran isn’t between the Green movement reformers and the conservative establishment. It’s between conservative “principalists” like Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Majlis (the Iranian parliament), and hyper-conservatives like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Wall Street Journal has a report today from the excellent Farnaz Fassihi that the Majlis wanted [...]
Doesn’t really seem that way: American businesses earned profits of $1.66 trillion at an annual rate in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms. Corporate profits have been [...]
Barack Obama has to be feeling whipsawed by the current hoo-hah over airport body searches. First, he catches all sorts of grief for the terrorist near-misses in Times Square and by the Undiebomber. Now, he’s catching all sorts of grief because of amped up TSA security measures. A Washington Post poll today shows solid approval for [...]
Some observers viewed the single guilty verdict against the Tanzania Embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani last week as the death knell for civilian trials for terrorism suspects. Opponents of trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his co-conspirators in Article III courts declared civilian trials too dangerous after the jury convicted Ghailani on just one [...]
First, a few quick bits of context for Obama’s children’s book, Of Thee I Sing, released last week and now climbing up bestseller lists. – According to the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Obama finished writing the book before he was in office. So let us put a hold on the indignation at his penning stories [...]
Les Gelb is certainly right that bribing the Israelis with $3 billion in military equipment in return for a 90-day West Bank settlement freeze is a terrible idea. The payment should be reserved for a more substantial commitment from the Israelis–a complete and permanent halt to settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They [...]
This is startling–and more than a little discouraging: KABUL — Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday… Few Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, Taliban [...]
