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	<title>SwamplandCategory: Viewpoint &#124; Swampland &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<description>Political insight from the Beltway and beyond</description>
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		<title>SwamplandCategory: Viewpoint &#124; Swampland &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com</link>
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		<title>The Civil-Liberties Freak-Out</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/10/the-civil-liberties-freakout/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/10/the-civil-liberties-freakout/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:10:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Joe Klein</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[In the Arena]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=97548</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unaccustomed as I am to agreeing with Marc Thiessen, hell has frozen over and he&#8217;s on the right track about the National Security Agency–leaks nonscandal. First of all, we pretty much knew everything that has &#8220;broken&#8221; in the past week. The NSA has been involved in a legal data-mining operation for almost a decade. Its legality was clarified in the renewal of the Patriot Act, which I supported. It has been described, incorrectly, as electronic eavesdropping. What is really happening is that phone and Internet records are being scanned for patterns that might illuminate terrorist networks. If there is a need to actually eavesdrop, the government has to go to the FISA court for permission. (MORE: Edward Snowden Comes Forward as NSA Whistle-Blower, Surfaces in Hong Kong) Those who see the federal government as a vast corporate conspiracy or a criminal enterprise — in other words, paranoids of the left and right — are concerned about this. More moderate sorts should also have cause for concern — especially if a rogue government, like Nixon&#8217;s, were in power. We have to remain vigilant that the snooping stays within reasonable bounds; that&#8217;s why we have congressional oversight committees. And that&#8217;s where the paranoid tinge comes in: the FISA court, the congressional committees, the President and journalists like me are obviously incompetent or caught up in the conspiracy. Of course, there has been absolutely no evidence presented that the current parameters are unreasonable. Yes, I expect that some of my phone and e-mail traffic has been picked up in the data trawling. I travel fairly frequently to places like Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, the West Bank and the rest of the region; part of my job is to talk to partisans on all sides — and also to talk to sources in the U.S. military and intelligence communities. I have no problem with the government knowing that I&#8217;m doing my job. I do have a problem with individuals like Bradley Manning divulging secrets that may well put lives in danger; his reckless actions require<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=97548&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/2013-06-09t220408z_1301958639_gm1e96a0.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defense contractor, in a still image taken from a video during an interview with the Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong, on June 6, 2013.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jklein1271</media:title>
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		<title>Gay Boy Scouts Employee: I Can&#8217;t Live a Lie Any Longer</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/21/gay-boy-scouts-employee-i-cant-live-a-lie-any-longer/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/21/gay-boy-scouts-employee-i-cant-live-a-lie-any-longer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 09:00:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>An Employee of the Boy Scouts of America</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=96103</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I am a full-time paid professional employee of the Boy Scouts of America. I am also gay. I spend 14-hour days and 80-hour workweeks promoting the Scouting program and providing the best possible services to build and retain membership. I do this with honor because I am a product of the program. I am an Eagle Scout and a member of Scouting’s Honor Society. I&#8217;ve dedicated more than two decades of my life to the Boy Scouts of America – first as a Scout and now for over five years as an employee. When I was a Scout, the program offered me many important life experiences and skills in areas including leadership, communication and conflict resolution. My many experiences and memories still impact my life now. These opportunities need to be made available to all youth, regardless of their sexual orientation. There are dozens of other gay professionals like me in the Scouts. I have met them through Scouting training courses and programs for adult leaders and employees. We dedicate ourselves to Scouting and fully support the organization. Yet we live with apprehension, hiding our personal lives and not knowing if we could be outed and fired at any moment. We continually face awkward questions about our personal lives. While the Scouts claim to be a family organization, for us there are two options for having a family: hide the people we love or leave Scouting. Because of this ban, not only can my co-workers not know who I am, but many of my friends and neighbors also do not know. I live my life in silence as a result of the Scouts&#8217; anti-gay policy. I constantly fear being fired. As an employee, I have a unique commitment to the organization, but I also face losing my job every single day because of who I am. My hope is to make Scouting stronger so it may flourish in local communities. But in order for Scouting to continue as the premier youth-serving agency in this country, it must be inclusive of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=96103&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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			<media:title type="html">An Eagle Scout patch is pictured in Orlando, on May 30, 2012.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>Republicans Seem to Be Out of Economic Ideas — Here Are Two Suggestions</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/05/20/republicans-seem-to-be-out-of-economic-ideas-here-are-two-suggestions/#ixzz2Tq3cDcwV</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/05/20/republicans-seem-to-be-out-of-economic-ideas-here-are-two-suggestions/#ixzz2Tq3cDcwV#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 13:33:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rana Foroohar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=96046</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=96046&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/rtxz6b1.jpg?w=139</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">A protester holds a placard during a rally in Trafalgar Square in central London</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>Michael Crowley on Benghazi</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/17/michael-crowley-on-benghazi/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/17/michael-crowley-on-benghazi/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 15:23:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TIME Staff</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=95961</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[TIME&#8217;s Michael Crowley stopped by Hardball last night to discuss the historical significance of the White House&#8217;s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=95961&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/screen-shot-2013-05-17-at-11-08-43-am.png?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">michael crowley</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeadmin</media:title>
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		<title>Syria: Intervention Will Only Make it Worse</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/syria-intervention-will-only-make-it-worse/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/syria-intervention-will-only-make-it-worse/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 22:29:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zbigniew Brzezinski</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=95192</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This article appears in this week&#8217;s magazine under the title, &#8220;Intervention Will Only Make it Worse.&#8221; Brzezinski rebuts Sen. John McCain, who argues in his article that Syrian intervention is in the U.S. interest. The Syrian conflict is a sectarian war in a volatile region whose potential to spread and directly threaten American interests would only be increased by U.S. intervention. The struggle is between forces funded and armed by outside sponsors, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran. Also participating are foreign religious groups not directly controlled by the sponsors, namely the Sunni Salafists and Iranian-aligned militias, not to mention intensely anti-Western al-Qaeda fighters. American involvement would simply mobilize the most extreme elements of these factions against the U.S. and pose the danger that the conflict would spill over into the neighborhood and set Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon on fire. That risk has been compounded by the recent Israeli bombing of weapons sites inside Syria. Whatever their justification, the attacks convey to some Arabs the sense that there is an external plot against them. That impression would be solidified if the U.S. were now to enter the fight, suggesting a de facto American-Israeli-Saudi alliance, which would play into the hands of the extremists. (PHOTOS: Chaos and Killing in Syria: Photos of a Slow-Motion Civil War) Broader regional fighting could bring the U.S. and Iran into direct conflict, a potentially major military undertaking for the U.S. A U.S.-Iran confrontation linked to the Syrian crisis could spread the area of conflict even to Afghanistan. Russia would benefit from America’s being bogged down again in the Middle East. China would resent U.S. destabilization of the region because Beijing needs stable access to energy from the Middle East. To minimize these potential consequences, U.S. military intervention would have to achieve a decisive outcome relatively quickly through the application of overwhelming force. That would require direct Turkish involvement, which seems unlikely given Turkey’s internal difficulties, particularly its tenuous relations with its substantial Kurdish minority. The various schemes that have been proposed for a kind of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=95192&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Magazine</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/magazine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/syria_0506.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Women on the frontlines of Syrian civil war</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/509f545dfcf07266c1eb847a42170416?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>Syria: Intervention is in Our Interest</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/syria-intervention-is-in-our-interest/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/syria-intervention-is-in-our-interest/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 22:04:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John McCain</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=95183</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This article appears in this week&#8217;s magazine. McCain rebuts Zbigniew Brzezinski, who argues in his article that Syrian intervention will only make the situation worse. The strategic and humanitarian costs of the conflict in Syria continue to rise, not just for Syrians but also for vital U.S. interests. Chemical weapons have likely been used by President Bashar Assad’s regime against civilians, and more than 70,000 people have been slaughtered. The -al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front has gained unprecedented strength on the ground. Iran and its proxy Hizballah are building a network of militias inside Syria. A staggering 5 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes. Meanwhile, cross-border spillover threatens the security and stability of our allies and partners Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon. I know Americans are war-weary and eager to focus on our domestic and economic problems, not foreign affairs. I also know the situation in Syria is complex and there are no ideal options. But the basic choice we face is not complicated: Do the costs of inaction outweigh the costs of action? The events of the past 26 months have convinced me that they do. All of the terrible consequences those against intervening predicted would happen in Syria if we intervened happened because we did not. This conflict will grind on with all of its worsening effects until the military balance of power shifts more decisively against Assad and his Iranian, Russian and Hizballah backers. (PHOTOS: Chaos and Killing in Syria: Photos of a Slow-Motion Civil War) The U.S. does not have to act alone, put boots on the ground or destroy every Syrian air-defense system to make a difference. We could train and arm well-vetted Syrian opposition forces, as recommended last year by President Obama’s national-security team. We could strike Assad’s aircraft and Scud-missile launchers. We could destroy artillery and drive Assad’s forces from their posts. We could station Patriot-missile batteries just outside Syria to create safe zones across the border. Taking these steps would save innocent lives, give the moderate opposition a better chance to succeed<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=95183&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Magazine</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/magazine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/1500_wsyria_2_0520.jpeg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">A building destroyed by a regime airstrike in the Bustan Al Bashar neighborhood of Aleppo.</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/509f545dfcf07266c1eb847a42170416?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Don’t Let the Boston Bombing Take Away Our Privacy Rights</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/02/viewpoint-dont-let-the-boston-bombing-take-away-our-privacy-rights/#ixzz2SADxJCXS</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/02/viewpoint-dont-let-the-boston-bombing-take-away-our-privacy-rights/#ixzz2SADxJCXS#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2013 19:13:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Anthony Romero</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=94730</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=94730&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/130513058603.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Islamic Society of Boston Mosque, Attended By Boston Bombers</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>Tread on Me: The Case for Freedom From Terrorist Bombings, School Shootings and Exploding Factories</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/23/tread-on-me-the-case-for-freedom-from-terrorist-bombings-school-shootings-and-exploding-factories/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/23/tread-on-me-the-case-for-freedom-from-terrorist-bombings-school-shootings-and-exploding-factories/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:30:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Grunwald</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93756</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We’re often told that our liberties are under assault. The right warns that our Big Government nanny state is plotting to seize our guns and our Big Gulps, while strangling our economic freedom with taxes and regulations. The left rails against our Big Government security state — the drone warfare, indefinite detention and electronic surveillance that make the war on terrorism sound like an Orwellian nightmare. The National Rifle Association had just finished bellowing about background checks violating our Second Amendment rights when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) started shrieking about the FBI violating the Boston bombing suspect’s Miranda rights. America was born from resistance to tyranny, and our skepticism of authority is a healthy tradition. But we’re pretty free. And the &#8220;don’t tread on me&#8221; slippery-slopers on both ends of the political spectrum tend to forget that Big Government helps protect other important rights. Like the right of a child to watch a marathon or attend first grade without getting killed — or, for that matter, the right to live near a fertilizer factory without it blowing up your house. Our government needs to balance these rights, which is tough sometimes. But not always. Requiring gun owners to pass background checks and restricting access to high-capacity magazines would be a minuscule price to pay to help avoid future Newtowns and Auroras. If the FBI waits a few days to read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the Miranda boilerplate he’s already heard a million times on Law and Order, the Republic will survive, and the authorities might learn something that will help prevent another tragedy. (In fact, if America&#8217;s ubiquitous surveillance network hadn&#8217;t captured Tsarnaev on video, he might still be at large.) Even in a free-enterprise system — especially in a free-enterprise system — a factory owner’s right to run his business without government interference is trumped by the public-safety rights of the local community. In the Obama era, Tea Party Republicans like Senator Rand Paul have portrayed the U.S. government as a threat to individual liberty, an oppressive force in<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93756&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/23/tread-on-me-the-case-for-freedom-from-terrorist-bombings-school-shootings-and-exploding-factories/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ap693791092152-copy.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Mike Murphy</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">michaelgrunwald</media:title>
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		<title>Tailpipe Politics: The Lessons (So Far) of 2013</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/02/obama-clears-away-smog-advances-climate-agenda/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/02/obama-clears-away-smog-advances-climate-agenda/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:45:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Grunwald</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=91878</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The EPA unveiled its new anti-smog rules on Friday, prompting the usual Republican complaints about President Obama’s war on free enterprise, along with the usual dire warnings of higher prices at the pump. The rules will raise gas prices, but less than a cent a gallon. Meanwhile, by 2030, they’ll avoid an estimated 2,400 annual premature deaths, prevent 23,000 respiratory illnesses in children, and reduce tailpipe emissions by the equivalent of taking 33 million cars off the road. I’m not too interested in the umpteenth fight between the president and the anti-environmental GOP. But it’s worth noting that one of Obama’s lasting legacies will be much cleaner cars on American roads. He doubled fuel efficiency standards for U.S. cars and trucks, the most important action ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. His 2009 stimulus bill jump-started our electric-vehicle industry—it actually created a domestic EV battery industry from scratch—as well as our advanced biofuels industry, while funding unprecedented research into the batteries, biofuels, and other clean-car technologies of tomorrow. And now this. (MORE: The U.S. Will Be an Oil Giant Again. But It Won’t Be Energy Independent) There are three lessons here: 1: Deeds &#62; Words. I still think the most important thing to know about Obama, who was often dismissed as a words guy when he started running for president, is that he’s turned out to be a deeds guy.  This is especially true when it comes to energy and climate, even though some Ivory Soap enviros will never be satisfied with 99.44% purity. For example, Obama didn’t say much about global warming in his first term, but he did double U.S. generation of renewable power, partly by investing $90 billion in wind, solar and other clean energy sources in the stimulus, partly by approving the first three dozen renewable-electricity projects on federal land. It’s not a coincidence that our oil imports and carbon emissions are at their lowest levels in two decades, or that Tesla Motors—which just turned its first profit—has announced it will repay its federal loan five<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=91878&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/obama1.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">U.S. President Barack Obama walks past a Chevy Volt electric car as he tours the Argonne National Lab near Chicago</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/ddcaf430de0f1a59f27cc4ad614221d9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">michaelgrunwald</media:title>
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		<title>What Bush Got Right on Iraq &#8212; and What Obama Can Learn from It</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/20/what-bush-got-right-on-iraq-and-what-obama-can-learn-from-it/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/20/what-bush-got-right-on-iraq-and-what-obama-can-learn-from-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:45:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Massimo Calabresi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=90840</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This article was updated with Condoleezza Rice&#8217;s response at 10:50 am When George W. Bush became President in January 2001, American policy towards Iraq was in free fall and the United Nations sanctions against Saddam’s regime, in place since the first Gulf War, were in tatters. By early 2003, Bush had achieved something most analysts had thought impossible: sanctions on Iraq were tighter than ever and inspectors were back in the country. Most surprising, Saddam Hussein had reportedly offered to go into exile, as long as he could take $1 billion with him. And then Bush threw that diplomatic progress aside and committed the U.S. to a war that would cost thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi ones, and more than $700 billion in American treasure. If you factor in veterans care and other costs, the price runs to the trillions. As President Obama heads down his own path to war over Iran’s nuclear program, it’s worth reviewing not only what Bush did wrong as he confronted Iraq ten years ago&#8211;but what he did right. (MORE: Saddam Hussein Would Have Survived the Arab Spring) In Jan. 2001 the collapse of the Iraq sanctions regime was obvious. Passed in the wake of the Gulf War, the sanctions were intended to enforce provisions of Iraq’s 1991 surrender requiring the destruction of all of its chemical and biological weapons and prohibiting its pursuit of a nuclear program. All Iraqi oil sales were to be controlled by the U.N. But throughout the Clinton administration, Saddam violated the surrender terms and the U.N. sanctions regime. In Oct. 1998 he permanently kicked out U.N. inspectors. By November 2000, Syria had opened an unauthorized pipeline from Iraq. Oil and refined petroleum were flowing across the Turkish border in long convoys of tanker trucks. International flights, also banned under the sanctions, were starting up again. “The U.S. position is deteriorating by the day,” Ken Katzman, the long-time Middle East analyst for the Congressional Research Service, told TIME late in 2000. By Jan. 22, 2003, things could hardly<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=90840&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/80631903.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Former President George W. Bush arrives to speak on the war in Iraq at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 10, 2008.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">calabresim</media:title>
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		<title>Cory Booker Wins South By Southwest (SXSW) — How a Mayor Conquered America’s Biggest Tech Festival</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/03/12/cory-booker-sxsw/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/03/12/cory-booker-sxsw/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:08:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Steven James Snyder</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=90386</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=90386&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/sxsw_cory_booker_0310.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Cory Booker</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/ab295c9397aa60a672afcc62a74f0300?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">stevos23</media:title>
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		<title>Ryan&#8217;s Latest Budget: Wrong Problem, Wrong Solution</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/13/ryans-latest-budget-wrong-problem-wrong-solution/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/13/ryans-latest-budget-wrong-problem-wrong-solution/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:45:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Grunwald</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=90303</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you’re not too interested in budget details, which is to say you’re a normal person, here are the basics of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s latest plan: He wants deep cuts in Medicaid, the health program serving the poor, the near-poor, the disabled, and nursing homes. He wants to transform Medicare from an entitlement for senior citizens into a voucher program, but only starting in 2024, so the changes wouldn’t affect the 55-and-over set that tends to vote Republican. He wants to rein in general spending, except for military spending. And he wants to slash tax rates for wealthy individuals and corporations to 25%, while making up the lost revenue with unspecified “reforms.” If this sounds a lot like the plans Ryan unveiled in 2009 and 2011—with a hint of the Romney-Ryan budget plan from 2012—well, it is. Ryan is under no obligation to revise his plans just because a majority of the electorate rejected them, although it is amusing to see him claim (p. 5) that “most Americans” share his dystopic view of the nation’s current path. My beef with Ryan 3.0&#8211;like my critique of the “radical document” that was Ryan 1.0, and my screeds about the media gushfest over Ryan 2.0&#8211; is that it gets the problem wrong and the solution wrong. It would hurt people who need help and helps people who don’t. And while Ryan deserves some credit for taking some political risks, his budget is still brimming with the dishonesty and hypocrisy that often characterizes the modern Republican Party. A few specific examples: “The Current Mess.” (p. 4) In his introduction, Ryan argues that his plan, designed to balance the federal budget in 10 years, is needed because America is going to hell. He identifies the problem as an out-of-control deficit created by out-of-control spending. If we don’t act now, he says, we’ll have a “debt crisis,” followed by “debasement of our currency,” and a parade of horribles: “Our finances will collapse. The economy will stall. The safety net will unravel.” His budget is “an exit ramp from the current<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=90303&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/163556569.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan Unveils House Republicans&#039; FY2014 Budget Resolution</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">michaelgrunwald</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">House Budget</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/screen-shot-2013-03-12-at-10-41-03-pm.png" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">House Budget</media:title>
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		<title>The Sequester Is a Republican-Inflicted Wound</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/04/the-sequester-is-a-republican-inflicted-wound/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/04/the-sequester-is-a-republican-inflicted-wound/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:45:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Grunwald</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=89516</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The sequester is here, with an initial $85 billion worth of haphazard and economically destructive spending cuts, a Washington wound almost universally described as “self-inflicted.” Let’s be clearer: It’s Republican-inflicted. It is a direct result of the insistence by GOP leaders in the summer of 2011 that they would not raise the federal debt ceiling unless President Obama agreed to dramatic spending cuts. One can argue that the growth of the debt or the size of the government justified that insistence; I’d disagree. But it’s simply a fact that every budget crisis of the last two years—the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, the failure of the “supercommittee,” the fiscal cliff, and now this—stems from Republican debt-limit brinksmanship. This is what makes all the Beltway back-and-forth about who came up with the sequester, and who moved which goalposts, and what Gene Sperling said to Bob Woodward, so annoying. The origin of this mess is absolutely clear. It was created by the Budget Control Act of 2011, the ransom Republican leaders received for agreeing to let the U.S. government pay its bills. (MORE: The Sequester Fight Was the Pregame. Here Comes the Main Event) Traditionally, the debt ceiling had been a symbolic cap, an opportunity for members of Congress in the minority party (including a certain Illinois Senator Barack Obama back in 2006) to grandstand about the fiscal irresponsibility of the majority party before the limit was increased. (In Obama’s semi-defense, the irresponsibility of tax-cutting, big-spending Republicans in the Bush era was truly breathtaking.) After their big congressional wins in the 2010 midterms, though, GOP leaders declared that the debt was out of control, so they would not raise the debt limit without an equivalent amount of spending cuts. They threatened to force the U.S. government into default—essentially, to crash the global economy—unless Obama accepted a massive rollback of the welfare state. Let’s pause for a moment to discuss that threat. Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t really want the Treasury to default<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=89516&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/pol-boehner-0303.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Speaker of the House John Boehner leaves a press conference on sequestration on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 28, 2013.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">michaelgrunwald</media:title>
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		<title>Party, Heal Thyself</title>
		<link>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2137407-1,00.html</link>
		<comments>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2137407-1,00.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:41:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Pete Wehner </dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=89349</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=89349&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Magazine</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/magazine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/360_cwehner_0311.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">G.O.P./Republican</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/509f545dfcf07266c1eb847a42170416?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>I&#8217;m with the Tree Huggers</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/28/im-with-the-tree-huggers/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/28/im-with-the-tree-huggers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:45:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Grunwald</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=89188</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The activists fighting the Keystone XL pipeline are radical-and right The respectable center has recognized that climate change is not only real and man-made but also a genuine emergency. The scientific evidence has become too stark to indulge denial or dithering. The earth is hotter; Arctic ice is melting at a terrifying rate; staid institutions like reinsurers and the CIA are sounding dire warnings about rising seas and extreme droughts. There&#8217;s an emerging consensus that fossil fuel apologists are on the wrong side of the battle of the century. But there&#8217;s also an emerging consensus-among newspaper editorial boards, respectable-centrist pundits, even the magazine Nature- that the rabble-rousing activists who have tied themselves to the White House gate and clamored for President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline are picking the wrong fight. Stopping Keystone, these critics point out, wouldn&#8217;t prevent catastrophic warming. It might not even prevent the extraction from Canada&#8217;s dirty tar sands. It wouldn&#8217;t cut emissions as much as new coal regulations or clean-energy subsidies or carbon pricing. Meanwhile, approving the pipeline would create jobs and reduce our dependence on petro-dictators while signaling that Obama isn&#8217;t as radical as the tree huggers protesting outside his house. TIME Graphic Well, I&#8217;m with the tree huggers. The pipeline isn&#8217;t the worst threat to the climate, but it&#8217;s a threat. Keystone isn&#8217;t the best fight to have over fossil fuels, but it&#8217;s the fight we&#8217;re having. Now is the time to choose sides. It&#8217;s always easy to quibble with the politics of radical protest: Did ACT UP need to be so obnoxious? Didn&#8217;t the tax evasion optics of the Boston Tea Party muddle the anti-imperial message? But if we&#8217;re in a war to stop global warming &#8212; a war TIME declared on a green-bordered cover five years ago &#8212; then we need to fight it on the beaches, the landing zones and the carbon-spewing tar sands of Alberta. If we&#8217;re serious about reducing atmospheric carbon below 350 parts per million, we need to start leaving some carbon in the ground.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=89188&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Magazine</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/magazine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/keystone-xl-pipeline-2.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Keystone XL Pipeline</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/ddcaf430de0f1a59f27cc4ad614221d9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">michaelgrunwald</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Keystone XL Pipeline</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Keystone XL Pipeline protester</media:title>
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		<title>Why the Debt Crisis Has Trumped the Climate Crisis—at Least in D.C.</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/26/why-the-debt-crisis-has-trumped-the-climate-crisis-at-least-in-d-c/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/26/why-the-debt-crisis-has-trumped-the-climate-crisis-at-least-in-d-c/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:00:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan Walsh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=89094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To a certain group of Americans, the United States—neigh, the world—faces an existential crisis, one that threatens the prosperity and even stability of the future. This problem is so big and so frightening that solving it must be the government’s singular priority. It doesn’t matter that the very drastic steps needed to address the issue are likely to cause palpable economic pain in the short term—pain likely to be borne by the poorest and most vulnerable among us. It doesn’t matter that many experts doubt how serious this subject is, and worry that the solution could cause more trouble than the problem itself. Simply by expressing doubt, those dissenters prove themselves to be fundamentally unserious extremists—and they must be shouted down. There’s no time to waste with debate. Something must be done! If you read the newspaper or watch the cable shows, you know the problem I’m talking about. It’s the metastasizing federal debt, and to a significant slice of elite Washington—and most of the Republican party—reducing that debt chiefly through drastic spending cuts trumps every other problem facing the country today. That fear is the reason why the political parties find themselves unable to head off the looming budget sequestration, that series of automatic hatchet cuts to government spending amounting to $1.2 trillion over 10 years. It’s the reason why our government seems to be lurching from one fiscal crisis to another. But to debt hardliners, there can be no negotiation—and dissenters like the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must be defeated. It’s telling that deficit scolds have throwing around the term “debt deniers” to describe their apostate opponents—there’s even an @debtdeniers Twitter account—as if debt skeptics are trying to deny a scientific reality when they question the need for deep and immediate austerity. The term “denier” should sound familiar to those who follow the climate wars. It’s a cudgel used against those who question the vast—it must be said—scientific consensus that man-made climate change is real and dangerous. But it’s not only similarity with the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=89094&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/131110231-e1361836384960.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Simpson Bowles</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/509f545dfcf07266c1eb847a42170416?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>10 Questions Senators Should Ask CIA-Nominee John Brennan</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/06/what-senators-should-ask-cia-nominee-john-brennan/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/06/what-senators-should-ask-cia-nominee-john-brennan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:53:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Robert Baer</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=87393</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On Thursday the Senate will have a rare opportunity to grill President Obama&#8217;s counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan, who&#8217;s been nominated to head the CIA. Let&#8217;s hope they don&#8217;t blow it. This White House has been as secretive and closed-mouth as any, leaving us in doubt what exactly our counter-terrorism policy is. We&#8217;re still dropping drone missiles on Pakistan, although the front seems to have shifted to North Africa and the Sahel. Are we truly winning against al-Qaeda, or is it moving around too fast for us to keep up? That may be too abstract of an equation to get answered in a Senate hearing. But if Brennan were sitting in front of me, I wouldn&#8217;t let him go until he&#8217;d clearly and factually answered these questions: 1. Assassination of American citizens The Administration has claimed authority to assassinate American citizens it judges to be an &#8220;imminent&#8221; danger to this country. What sort of affiliation would cause an American to end up on a &#8220;kill list&#8221;? How many Americans are are currently on them? But most importantly, how sure are we of the intelligence that puts an American on one of these lists? There are persistent reports from Pakistan and Yemen that drones are killing the wrong people. How do we know the same faulty intelligence won&#8217;t lead to the wrongful assassination of an American? 2. Is Pakistan Playing with an Open Hand on al-Qaeda? Abbottabad is a garrison town, vigilantly patrolled and protected by Pakistan&#8217;s military and security services. Foreigners can&#8217;t drive ten feet into town without being stopped and having their IDs checked. How was it that Osama bin Laden and his Arab entourage managed to live there for nearly seven years without coming to the attention of the authorities? The chances of Pakistan&#8217;s normally efficient &#8211; at least to some degree &#8211; intelligence services being entirely ignorant about Bin Laden&#8217;s presence are zero to none. So, how high did such knowledge go? If it went to the top, it means that Pakistan has never truly been fighting on<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=87393&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/06/what-senators-should-ask-cia-nominee-john-brennan/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/brennan.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">John Brennan</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/509f545dfcf07266c1eb847a42170416?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>The Decline of Unions Is Your Problem Too</title>
		<link>http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/29/viewpoint-why-the-decline-of-unions-is-your-problem-too/</link>
		<comments>http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/29/viewpoint-why-the-decline-of-unions-is-your-problem-too/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:29:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Eric Liu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=86434</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=86434&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/unions.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">unions</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/509f545dfcf07266c1eb847a42170416?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">drogers1271</media:title>
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		<title>Viewpoint: The GOP Searches for a New Strategy — in All the Wrong Places</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/28/viewpoint-the-gop-searches-for-a-new-strategy-in-all-the-wrong-places/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/28/viewpoint-the-gop-searches-for-a-new-strategy-in-all-the-wrong-places/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:40:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alex Altman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reince priebus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republicans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=86273</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The dust had barely settled on the Republican Party&#8217;s drubbing in November when party leaders called for a through examination of what went wrong. &#8220;We’ve got to give our political organization a very serious proctology exam,&#8221; said Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor. &#8221;We need to look everywhere.&#8221; The GOP had just lost the White House and dropped seats in the House and Senate. If the first step to fixing the problem is admitting you have one, Republicans took that first step with alacrity. Nearly three months later, however, the great Republican reckoning hasn&#8217;t gotten much further. It&#8217;s not that they aren&#8217;t trying. The Republican National Committee set up a ethnically diverse working group of party elders to solicit input and devise a plan for the future. The House GOP held a seminar on how to communicate with minorities and women, groups that spurned them en masse in November. Pollsters were summoned to advise members to stop talking about rape. Strategists wielded stats underlining the demographic changes that could consign the party to permanent-minority status if it can&#8217;t find a way to broaden its base. All of these are important steps. But for all the bracing talk, the GOP is still ignoring its deepest liability: not its tone, but the substance of its policies. That was apparent from a pair of buzzy speeches delivered at the RNC&#8216;s winter meeting, at a hotel in Charlotte, N.C., where the party&#8217;s brain trust spent three days last week mulling how to refashion itself for the future. One was delivered by Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, who was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term despite the defeat in November. It&#8217;s worth reading his remarks in full, but the gist was simple. The Republican Party&#8217;s beliefs aren&#8217;t the problem, Priebus said. Its messaging is the problem. &#8220;We can stand by our timeless principles—and articulate them in ways that are modern,&#8221; he said, &#8220;relevant to our time and relatable to the majority of voters. And that, I believe, is how we’ll achieve a Republican renewal. That’s how we’ll<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=86273&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Republican Party</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/2012-election/republican-party/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/sl-gop-republican-0127.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gavels the opening of the second session of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 28, 2012.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/41a5f1af68b9fd647df540c67f1a464a?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Alex Altman</media:title>
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		<title>Obama and the Liberals, Part Two: Progressives Should Focus on Progress</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/10/obama-and-the-liberals-part-two-progressives-should-focus-on-progress/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/10/obama-and-the-liberals-part-two-progressives-should-focus-on-progress/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:33:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Grunwald</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White House]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=84738</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s understandable that some liberals expected President Obama to lead America into a progressive Era of Good Feelings, to use the power of his bully pulpit and his grass-roots supporters to force Washington partisans to set aside childish things and come together for the common good. It’s understandable because he basically said he would during the 2008 campaign. Well, he didn’t. Faced with an economic freefall and an obstructionist opposition, he decided it was more important to try to change the country than to try to change the capital. It’s fair to say that he overpromised, although the inherent problem with promising bipartisanship is that the other party can make you a promise-breaker by saying no. It’s fair to say that he didn’t live up to the hype, although as far as I can tell the only thing on this earth that lives up to the hype is parenthood. And it’s fair for liberals to criticize some of his less liberal policies, although he never claimed to agree with them on issues like education reform, drone strikes, or long-term deficit reduction. OK, that’s enough fairness. I don’t just mock the Obama-bashing utopians of the left for fun, although it is fun. My beef with Ivory Soap liberals, Choose Your Own Adventure Liberals and Heighten the Contradictions liberals is that they’ve missed the point of the Obama era. They’re such committed progressives that they’ve lost interest in progress. (SPECIAL: 2012 Person of the Year: Barack Obama, the President) Obama ran on an unusually detailed policy agenda in 2008, pledging changes in the way we approach energy, health care, education and the economy. The media didn’t pay much attention to that agenda, partly because they were more interested in his race and his crazy pastor and his pretty promises about post-partisanship, partly because it was mostly the basic Democratic agenda of reversing the Bush era and investing in the future. The untold story of Obama’s first term—well, I tried to tell it in my book—is that he largely did what he said<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=84738&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/miscellany/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/2012-10-17t041712z_10550659.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Political Photos of the Week</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/ddcaf430de0f1a59f27cc4ad614221d9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">michaelgrunwald</media:title>
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