President Obama and the First Lady take part in a moment of silence on January 10 in honor of the victims of the shooting in Tucson. (REUTERS/Jim Young)
–President Obama will travel to Arizona Wednesday to speak at a memorial for the victims of Saturday’s shooting.
–Gun control advocates Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Carolyn …
(Tom Williams/Roll Call)
–John Boehner is poised to take the Speaker’s gavel today. Alex raises the curtain.
–Ahmed Rahsid reports on the incredibly precarious path ahead in Afghanistan.
–Biden chief of staff and all-around White House heavyweight Ron Klain will depart for the private sector.
–Steve Schale, Obama’s …
Senator Joe Lieberman gives a thumbs up while arriving with Majority Leader Harry Reid for a press conference on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal on December 18. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
–The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty will face a test vote on Tuesday, but the path to 67 votes and final ratification is steep now …
–As Mark reports, the Obama administration’s Afghan war review depicts a fragile effort nonetheless on track for draw-down starting next year. The Times gets a Taliban commander on record saying “the government has the upper hand now” in Kandahar.
–The standalone “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” repeal heads to the Senate as the tax deal …
Defense Secretary Robert Gates boards a C-17 after visiting U.S. troops at Forward Operating Base Howz-E-Madad in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan December 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Win McNamee)
–The Senate begins debate on Obama’s tax compromise today and Dems there are beginning to thaw. House Dems not so much; some
(White House/Chuck Kennedy)
–From the archives: What you didn’t know about the turkey pardon and what happens to the not-so-lucky ones.
–Obama pledges solidarity with South Korea, dispatches warship for exercises.
–Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and David Brock talk about the new Dem Super PAC.
–Re disclosure, Brock’s …
Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani journalist who knows Afghanistan better than anyone, has scored a disturbing interview with Hamid Karzai, in which the Afghan leader really does seem to be getting tired of the American military strategy–specifically, the special operations night raids targeting Taliban leaders, which have been the most …
On Sunday McClatchy dropped its months-long investigation of U.S. construction projects in Afghanistan. The picture is not pretty and an unsettling metaphor for the nine-year war effort emerges:
A McClatchy investigation has found that since January 2008, nearly $200 million in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction projects in
…
Meg Whitman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown appear at the Women’s Conference 2010 in Long Beach, California on October 26. (REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni)
–At the nifty new National Journal, Jeremy Jacobs reports the DCCC is making its last stand for the House, dumping $21.6 million on airtime in 66 districts. That includes a …
Dexter Filkins has a fascinating, if confusing, piece today about the negotiations that have begun between the Karzai government and high-level elements of the Taliban…but not including the highest-level element, Mullah Omar. What is unclear is whether Omar–who has been “cut out” of the negotiations–has authorized his deputies to …
Iran is participating in the Afghan contact group talks in Rome. There is precedent for this: Iran participated in the Bonn talks that created a new Afghan government in 2001–to good effect, I’m told. That might have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but the Bush Administration was more interested in constructing an Axis of
…
The long-awaited battle for Kandahar Province has begun and Time’s Jason Motlagh is there, at the heart of the fight in the same Zhari district where I embedded last April. There is a larger story here, about a change in emphasis by General David Petraeus, from counterinsurgency toward counterterrorism, that Fred Kaplan laid out here …
–President Karzai is reportedly talking reconciliation with the Taliban.
–Nepotism reigns in Afghanistan.
–Mark McKinnon doubts the whispers of a last-minute Democratic revival before the midterms.
–Rich Lowry is very optimistic about the new crop of Republicans likely headed to Washington in November. Philip Klein not …
