Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Via The Hill: Rep. West doubles down on communist ‘ideology’ of Progressive Caucus Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Thursday maintained that "the strategy, the tactics, the ideology" of Progressive Caucus members in Congress are the same as those of the Communist Party. "I’m just talking about the fact of the ideologies, the principles you believe [...]
It would be nice if policies were assessed in terms of costs and benefits.
Via the NYT: Escort Recounts Quarrel With Secret Service Agent There was a language gap between the 24-year-old woman, who declined to give her full name, and the American man who sat beside her all night and eventually invited her back to his room. She agreed, stopped on the way to buy condoms but told [...]
“I mentioned that President and General George Washington did not advocate pot smoking and that if he did, we probably would not have won the American Revolutionary War”—from the web site of Lynne Torgerson, Republican candidate for the House, 5th District of Minnesota. (The blog post from whence the quote comes is worth a read [...]
Earlier today Doug Mataconis asked Obama And Romney: A Dime’s Worth Of Difference On Foreign Policy? I understand the basic point about the general direction of US foreign policy being unlikely to change under a Romney administration. However, clearly presidents matter. The Carter’s foreign policy wasn’t Reagan’s which wasn’t Bush’s which wasn’t Clinton’s which wasn’t [...]
The Senate didn’t have a productive 2011. Is this just a case of laziness?
Via the BBC: US choice Jim Yong Kim is new World Bank chief US nominee Jim Yong Kim has been chosen as the new president of the World Bank. The Korean-American health expert is currently the president of Dartmouth University. [...] Dr Kim will succeed Robert Zoellick, serving a five-year term beginning on 1 July, [...]
Via Reuters: Latin America rebels against Obama over Cuba For the first time, conservative-led U.S. allies like Mexico and Colombia are throwing their weight behind the traditional demand of leftist governments that Cuba be invited to the next Summit of the Americas. Cuba was kicked out of the Organization of American States (OAS) a few [...]
Hugo Chávez missed the Summit of the Americas meeting in Colombia because of a need for more cancer treatments. Greg Weeks notes what this means: The bottom line is that this is not something Chávez wants to miss. There are relatively few opportunities to overcome the power imbalance between him and the U.S. president, but [...]
Freddie deBoer at Balloon Juice has a nice essay on this subject that looks at two key components of cost inflation in higher ed: rises in administrative costs and physical expansion. He points to the following via links and references in his piece. In regards to administrative costs, note the following from the executive summary [...]
It would be nice if people in power would be a bit more introspective and thoughtful.
I noted this earlier in the week, but failed to blog it. Via Yahoo: Newt Gingrich: ‘CNN is Less Biased Than Fox’ In what some might consider an act of GOP political suicide, Newt Gingrich slammed Fox News earlier this week, saying that the cable news channel has favored Mitt Romney throughout the 2012 Republican [...]
Via the NY Daily News: Secret Service agents busted because they refused to pay hooker: source Most of the Secret Service agents embroiled in a prostitution scandal brought women back to their Colombia hotel rooms before President Obama arrived in town for an international summit, Rep. Pete King said Saturday. King said the raunchy rendezvous [...]
Will Oremus at Slate discussed the phenomena, Hell Phone: Is there any way to stop the scourge of text message spam? I have had a similar experience of late: a number (thankfully not too much as yet) of text based spam offering any number of ridiculous offers (I think I have gotten the iPhone 5 [...]
Via WaPo: U.S. Secret Service agents leave Colombia over prostitution inquiry The U.S. Secret Service is investigating allegations of misconduct by agents who had been sent to Cartagena, Colombia, to provide security for President Obama’s trip to a summit that began there Friday. [...] Adler said the entire unit was recalled for purposes of the [...]
Via ABC: Santorum Donor Foster Friess Hopes Obama’s ‘Teleprompters Are Bulletproof’ "There’s a lot of things that haven’t been hammered at because Rick and Mitt have been kind of going at each other," Friess toldFox Business News’ Lou Dobbs on Wednesday. "Now that they’ve kind of trained their barrels on President Obama I’m afraid his, [...]
“We were winning. We were winning in a very different way because we were touching hearts. We were raising issues that, well, frankly, a lot of people didn’t want to have raised”—Rick Santorum in his concession speech this week. On the first sentence, perhaps that is the slogan that the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Charlotte [...]
Using some speculative mathematics, Keith Koffler asks: Did Obama Pay a Lower Rate Than His Secretary? Now, setting aside the question of whether the numbers are accurate (it is nearly impossible to know what someone paid in income taxes by simply taking a salary and applying marginal rates), I don’t think this situation means what [...]
James Joyner has had a couple of interesting posts over the last week concerning blog comments, especially here at OTB. Here are some more thoughts.
Via WSFA: Man jailed for wearing sagging pants in court An Autauga County man facing a charge of receiving stolen property is spending 3 days behind bars, not for that crime, but for wearing sagging pants in the courthouse. Lamarcus Ramsey, 20, of Prattville, was found in contempt of court. "It shows a general lack [...]
Via the BBC: Egypt court suspends constitutional assembly A court in Egypt has suspended the 100-member assembly appointed last month to draft the country’s new constitution. Several lawsuits had demanded Cairo’s Administrative Court block the decision to form the panel as it did not reflect the diversity of Egyptian society. They said women, young people [...]
Via the BBC: Norway’s mass killer Breivik declared sane A second psychiatric evaluation of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has found him sane enough to face trial and a jail term. The findings contradict a previous evaluation, published in November, that found him legally insane. Breivik is due to stand trial on Monday over [...]
Via the BBC: Abu Hamza US extradition backed by European Court The European Court of Human Rights has backed the extradition of Abu Hamza and four other terror suspects from the UK to the US. The Strasbourg court held there would be no violation of human rights for those facing life and solitary confinement in [...]
Via the BBC: Communist Cuba marks Good Friday with public holiday Communist Cuba is marking Easter with a public holiday on Good Friday, for the first time in decades. [...] Religious holidays in Cuba were cancelled after the 1959 revolution, and fewer than 10% of Cubans are practising Catholics. Nonetheless, the Church is the most [...]
Here’s my question: when (because I think it will be when, not if) the Supreme Court of the United States decides that same-sex marriage is constitutional via the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause (or whatever mechanism) and various state laws (including referenda in various states that passed by large majorities) are struck down, will we [...]
What we are seeing at the moment is the expected political churn that accompanies something as big as the PPACA case
While I do not support a rush to legal judgment or mob justice, I see no problem in forming opinions.
Via WaPo: Rep. Paul Ryan says he’d ‘consider’ a vice presidential candidacy. Of course, this is just Ryan being honest, yes? I always find it disingenuous when politicians say that they can’t even imagine being asked or when they dismiss the question entirely. There isn’t a politician alive, save for ex-presidents, who wouldn’t at least [...]
“[T]he hoodie has become a signifier of disgruntled, malevolent youth, scowling and indolent. The hoodie is the uniform of the troublemaker: its wearer may as well be emblazoned with a scarlet letter.”—Gaarth McLean, writing in the Guardian in 2005. “We—the people in suits—often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young [...]
Looking also at Zimmerman’s 911 call and who pursued whom.
Solutions come from understanding, not denial or political posturing
Why isn’t Obama doing better in the polls and did we just see a Kinsey Gaffe in the wild?
Hugo Chavez has built a state on cronyism.
Via CNN, Fareed Zakaria: Look, the world consumes about 80 million barrels of oil a day. The total U.S. increase in production, if you were to do everything that Newt Gingrich fantasizes about, would be less than half a percent of that. So the chance that it would have any impact on the price of [...]
It is a curious thing, sometimes, to look at how different people interpret events.
The voter ID issue goes on the road.
