Review: ‘The Kingdom’ Watching the trailers for ‘The Kingdom’ over the past several months, I was curious about how the film would portray Saudi Arabia and Saudis. I had personal experience with terrorist bombings of residential compounds in Riyadh and wanted to see how accurate the film might be. The film could have taken the [...]

The legendary Colonel H.R. McMaster has been passed over, for a second time, for promotion to flag rank. Matt Bennett, a VP at the liberal Third Way sees this is a “corollary to the Peter Principle: genuinely gifted and brilliant public servants who are kept far below the level to which they should ascend.” He, [...]

The USDA routinely gives money to dead people, the GAO found. The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and routinely failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were properly made, according to a government report. In a selection of 181 [...]

The Department of Homeland Security suffers from under staffing at the senior levels as well as political infighting and poor morale, according to a front page piece in today’s WaPo. The Bush administration has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a “gaping hole” [...]

Back in May, James Joyner and I wrote a piece for TCS Daily, Armed Diplomats? When State and Stability Operations Collide about the conflicting roles and missions of State Department diplomats and those of the US Military. The article noted that diplomats (as well as the various support staff needed to run a diplomatic missions, [...]

Following up on Steven Taylor’s post from this morning, the International Herald Tribune and others are reporting that former U.S. trade negotiator and deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick will replace Paul Wolfowitz as the president of the World Bank. Zoellick appears to be highly qualified for the position, and his apparent support from the [...]

Christian Science Monitor has a good piece on the difficulties in developing a pool of Arabic speakers who can help develop and support US foreign policy in the Middle East. The article, Why the pool of Arabic speakers is still a puddle, notes that Arabic is a difficult language, taking at least triple the time [...]

A bizarre quirk in U.S. immigration law known as the “widow penalty” can effect the lives of legal resident aliens married to U.S. citizens. One such example is Khin Win Mauro, the wife of Donn Mauro. Mrs. Mauro just saw the drunken driver who killed Donn get sentenced to jail. Khin Win was married to [...]

Washington Times “Inside Politics” columnist Greg Pierce reports on what looks to be a boondoggle for federal bureaucrats. A three-day, expense-paid trip to Walt Disney World Resorts — sound like a dream vacation? No, it’s “research,” according to four federal agencies sponsoring a June 3-5 conference in Orlando, Fla. The 2007 AcademyHealth Research Meeting is [...]

Megan McArdle tries to board an airplane carrying 3.5 ounce bottles of shampoo that are not in a government approved Ziplock back. Hilarity ensues. As asinine as TSA regulations are, however — and they are incredibly asinine, by the way — I’m with the commenters who argue against requiring TSA agents to make a lot [...]

In the comments of an unrelated post, Anderson asks what OTB thinks of the story (which I had somehow missed) of the Pentagon claiming to have lost some key evidence in the Jose Padilla trial. A videotape showing Pentagon officials’ final interrogation of al-Qaida suspect Jose Padilla is missing, raising questions about whether federal prosecutors [...]

While there are current arguments that the Medal of Honor has become a posthumous event only, sometimes bureaucracy (and stupidity, we won’t talk about the TSA here) is in the way of honoring those who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. It turns out in Oregon, there is only one Medal of Honor recipient, [...]

An audit by the Department of Justice Inspector General found that all but two of DOJ’s 26 sets of statistics about terrorism prosecutions are inaccurate. UPI’s Shaun Waterman: [Glen] Fine’s office examined the accuracy of 26 sets of terrorism-related statistics produced by the FBI, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and its Executive Office for United [...]

In a previous post I brought up something that my fellow blogger, Dave Schuler, has pointed to as a problem with health care: Gammon’s Law. The basic idea of Gammon’s Law is that even though expenditures in a bureaucratic system increase even though output (however you measure it) is decreasing. One thing this immediately brought [...]

Stephen DeAngelis provides an excellent follow-up to James Glanz’ NYT article about Iraq reconstruction teams which we discussed here yesterday. The fact that civilian experts are reluctant to find themselves in dangerous, uncomfortable places should come as no surprise. Few people seek to place themselves in such situations. The fact remains, however, that such people [...]

John Negroponte, the National Intelligence Director, is going to move to the State Department as Condi Rice’s deputy. John D. Negroponte, whom President Bush installed less than two years ago as the first director of national intelligence, will soon leave his post to become the State Department’s second-ranking official, administration officials said Wednesday. Mr. Negroponte [...]

Phil Carter points to an interesting piece in today’s WaPo by Glenn Kessler about how the State Department bureaucracy–or, technically, its contract support–is cheerily cranking out weekly reports proving that our now-declared failed strategy in Iraq is succeeding. A year ago, President Bush announced a new plan for Iraq, framed around “eight pillars” of U.S. [...]