Obama Offends 1.5 Billion Muslims
Writing at the San Francisco Chronicle, George Bisharat charges that Barack Obama unnecessarily offended the world's Muslims by pandering to the Israel lobby. On his first day as the presumptive Democratic candidate for president earlier this month, Barack Obama committed a serious foreign policy blunder. Reciting a litany of pro-Israeli positions at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 18, 2008 08:19
Freedom to Offend an American Exceptionalism
Adam Liptak reminds us that free speech rights are much more extensive in the United States than in most of the developed world. He cites the ongoing suit against Canada's MacLean's magazine and the numerous judgments against Brigitte Bardot in France, both for speech that offended Muslims. “In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 12, 2008 11:45
John McCain’s Jimmy Carter ‘Flip Flop’
The HuffPo PR department sent me an email entitled "McCain flip-flops on Jimmy Carter" touting a Seth Colter Walls post noting that John McCain has said nice things about Jimmy Carter in the past but is now saying mean things. He points to a recent quip by McCain that, "Sen. Obama says that I'm running for Bush's third term. It ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 11, 2008 14:28
Obama, The Jewish Lobby, and the Perils of Web 2.0
One of Barack Obama's key advantages in building grassroots support, especially among young people usually not apt to vote, has been his innovative use of the latest Web techniques, including the integration of social networking technologies. Not only did he lap the field in getting "friends" on Facebook and MySpace but he actually hired the guy who invented Facebook ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 9, 2008 07:23
Obama’s AIPAC Gambit
Dana Milbank makes a funny at Barack Obama's expense: Now, here's a change we can believe in. A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday -- and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner. Classic. As a pandering performance, it was the full Monty by a candidate who, during the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 5, 2008 10:53
Fulbright Scholarships Restored for Gaza Students
A bureaucratic SNAFU almost cost seven Palestinian students their ability to study abroad on prestigious Fulbright scholarships. The U.S. has reinstated the Fulbright scholarships of seven Gaza Strip students blocked by Israel from leaving the Hamas-ruled territory, the State Department said Monday. The students were informed Thursday that their scholarships for the upcoming academic year would be deferred because ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 2, 2008 14:35
Decapitation as a Counter-Terror Strategy
Aaron Mannes has done an extensive statistical analysis on the effectiveness of decapitation (in the figurative as well as the literal sense) in counter-terrorism. It is conventional wisdom that removing an organization's leaders is an effective counter-terror strategy, but the quantitative analysis is less clear on the issue. Most of the successes focus on specific instances, such as the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 30, 2008 16:31
McCain Rejects and Denounces Hagee
John McCain has repudiated, rejected, denounced, distanced, and otherwise made it clear that he's not a big fan of John Hagee, who he thinks is a nut. In the face of mounting controversy over headline-grabbing statements from Pastor John Hagee, CNN has learned presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has decided to reject his endorsement. The Huffington Post had published a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 22, 2008 19:03
Obama’s Jewish Problem
While much has been made of Barack Obama's problems with white working class voters, especially in Appalachia, a more problematic trend may be signs of trouble with Jewish voters, a strong if relatively small part of the Democratic base. Today's NYT features Jodi Kantor's story, "Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama." On Thursday, Mr. Obama will court Jewish voters with an ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 22, 2008 08:31
Bush to Attack Iran Before Leaving Office?
A thinly-sourced report by the Jerusalem Post claiming that President Bush had told the Israeli government that he plans to attack Iran before leaving office has been flatly denied by the White House. The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 20, 2008 13:47
