Thomas Friedman laments that said state of America’s transportation infrastructure. A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones [...]

We have killed the head of Shebab, the top al Qaeda militia in Somalia. Aden Hashi Ayro, one of Al Qaeda’s top agents in East Africa and the leader of the Islamist comeback in Somalia, was killed Thursday morning by an American airstrike, according to American and Somali officials. Mr. Ayro was one of the [...]

John McCain (who, as we all know, is the beneficiary of kid gloves treatment from the mainstream press while the two contenders for the Democratic nomination are constantly getting unfair coverage) has been targeted with another non-scandal scandal by his good friends at the New York Times. Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign [...]

The New York Times has a pretty in-depth article on America’s staggeringly high rates of incarceration. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and [...]

Today’s New York Times has a very long and detailed article regarding John McCain’s relationship with real estate developer Donald Diamond, a relationship that at least raises questions about whether Sen. McCain improperly used his influence as United States Senator to benefit a major donor. For Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican who has staked two [...]

Another Iraqi unit has fled rather than fought, Michael Gordon reports. A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias. The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led [...]

David Brooks makes two observations about education: An information revolution has increased the economic rewards of education and punished those who lack it. A pedagogical revolution has led to ferocious competition to get into the top universities but a decline in quality at the primary and secondary levels. For the first time in the nation’s [...]

Alan Reynolds over at the Cato Institute puts the current financial crisis into perspective, and notes that the current financial crisis isn’t nearly as a bad as many people seem to thing. Media hysteria over the mortgage crisis is almost certainly misleading countless people about prospects for the real economy. The US economy is likely [...]

Last week’s American Airlines debacle was the result of bureaucratic arrogance and inflexibility, not the public interest, Melanie Scarborough argues in the Washington Examiner. The Federal Aviation Administration forced the airline to ground a fleet of planes – canceling thousands of flights and stranding a quarter of a million passengers – because not all the [...]

A rather clueless NYT feature reports breathlessly that some people continue to live the good life even during recessions. Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman spent roughly $50,000 last month on [...]

The United States government is thinking about coming up with a coherent system for dealing with classified information. Steven Aftergood has details. U.S. intelligence agencies have embarked upon a process to develop a uniform classification policy and a single classification guide that could be used by the entire U.S. intelligence community, according to a newly [...]

Bill Kristol, fresh from various cocktail parties with conservatives and a couple of e-mails from Democrats, lays out his vision of how a general election contest between Barack Obama and John McCain will play out. He dismisses the notion that the prolonged, bitter fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton will ultimately hurt the Democrats, figuring [...]

When I read this post by one of the associate bloggers at Joe Gandelman’s The Moderate Voice, it piqued my interest. The post quotes briefly from this New York Times article about possible unrest from the sharp rise in the price of rice that’s gone on recently: HANOI — Rising prices and a growing fear [...]

Representative William J. Jefferson won his ‘Debate Clause’ case against the FBI but the incriminating evidence against him is still admissible. The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a lower court ruling that the F.B.I. went too far in searching the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat accused of using his position [...]

Kevin Drum cites several instances of John McCain acting in ways inconsistent with his maverick image and yet surviving with the image more-or-less intact, a situation he ascribes to a fawning press corps. He asks, “And what window do Democrats go to to get the same treatment the press gives McCain?” In reality, all of [...]

Responding to a Stephanie Rosenbloom piece in the NYT about professors who blur the lines dividing them from their students via Facebook and other social media networks, Dan Drezner observes, I neither accept nor proffer friend requests from current students. I do this because, well, I’m not their friend — and letting them think otherwise [...]

Ivan Dixon, best known for his role as Sergeant James Kinchloe on “Hogan’s Heroes,” died Sunday. Actor Ivan Dixon, who brought the problems and promise of contemporary blacks to life in the film “Nothing But a Man” and portrayed the levelheaded POW Kinchloe in TV’s “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died. He was 76. Dixon died Sunday [...]

Barack Obama gave his big race speech today. I haven’t heard it, just read the transcripts of the pre-release text and the as-delivered version. My colleague Dave Schuler observes, “I’ll wait for the overnight polls. Otherwise my remarks would just be a Rorschach test which is what the commentaries I’ve heard so far have been.” [...]

In recognition of the fifth anniversary of the U. S.-led and mostly U. S.-conducted invasion of Iraq and removal of the regime of Saddam Hussein, there have been a number of articles in the New York Times and elsewhere that have an odd sort of synergy to them. For example, there’s this interview from the [...]

Ashley Alexandra Dupre, made suddenly famous as the call girl most prominently linked to the Eliot Spitzer scandal, is angry that her name and likeness have been thrust into the spotlight. The lawyer for the call girl linked to the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer lashed out at the media on Friday for thrusting the [...]

If you look at the following headlines from just the last 24 hours: “Most Economists in Survey Say Recession is Already Here”, Wall Street Journal “Southland Home Prices Tumble Fast”, Los Angeles Times “Betting the Bank”, Paul Krugman op-ed in NYT “Investors Flock to a Classic Refuge, Propelling Its Price Past $1000”, New York Times [...]

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has finally resigned. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is resigning following intense pressure to step down because of a prostitution scandal. Spitzer says his resignation is effective Monday. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below. Gov. Eliot Spitzer has decided [...]

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer is “involved” in a prostitution ring. Details are still sketchy. Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning. Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides inside his Fifth Avenue apartment early [...]

Jason Campbell, Michael O’Hanlon and Amy Unikewicz say that Brookings has come up with some metrics to measure political progress in Iraq and that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there actually has been some. The most intriguing area of late is the sphere of politics. To track progress, we have established “Brookings benchmarks” — a set [...]

John McCain was born on a U.S. Navy base overseas. The NYT’s Carl Hulse has an interesting article about whether McCain is Constitutionally eligible to be president. Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate [...]

Kathryn Jean Lopez has the sad news that “William F. Buckley Jr., died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut. After year of illness, he died while at work.” Sad news, indeed. More from AP: Author and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. has died at age 82. His assistant Linda Bridges says Buckley died [...]

Howie Kurtz has an interesting piece on how mainstream media coverage of allegations of sexual misconduct have changed in recent years. It begins: When Gennifer Flowers held a news conference in 1992 to announce that she had carried on an affair with Bill Clinton, the New York Times devoted one paragraph of a news story [...]

Jay Rosen has a lengthy examination of the flap over the New York Times story on John McCain and hits on a very plausible theory: “Times editors are smart people prevented by their own codes from thinking politically. Yet those same codes permit intrusions into politics, like the Vicki Iseman story, that require them to [...]

The hubbub caused by the New York Times‘ front page allegations that John McCain had an improper relationship with a lobbyist took a bizarre new turn today, with editor Bill Keller saying the paper’s readers misunderstood the story and public editor Clark Hoyt mystified that the story was published at all. BILL KELLER, the executive [...]

Some Yahoo shareholders are suing their board over their handling of the Microsoft takeover bid. Two Detroit pension funds have sued Yahoo Inc. and its board of directors, saying they breached their duties to shareholders in trying to thwart a takeover by Microsoft Corp. [...] According to the lawsuit, Yahoo’s board is pursuing “value-destructive” third-party [...]

Senator John McCain declared our policy of containment towards Cuba a success and declared his support for an independent Kosovo in a conference call with bloggers this afternoon. He made some opening remarks focusing on foreign policy before taking questions and I had the opportunity to ask him to expand his thoughts. He challenged Barack [...]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer managing editor David McCumber “chose not to run the New York Times story on John McCain” in his paper even though it subscribes to the New York Times News Service. He explains: To me, the story had serious flaws. It did not convincingly make the case that McCain either had an affair with [...]

America’s love affair with golf has been fading with fewer men willing to devote a huge slice of their free time to the sport, forcing club owners to scramble for new ways to hook customers. “We have to change our mentality,” said Richard Rocchio, a public relations consultant. “The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, [...]

The New York Times today fronts a long exposé on John McCain, which the campaign describes as a “hit-and-run smear campaign,” under the headline “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” The piece alleges that McCain did favors for a female lobbyist nine or more years ago and insinuates that they were romantically [...]

Over at Reason Online Steve Chapman outlines the problems Senator Clinton has with markets. Obama, by contrast, acknowledges the bitter truth that when government regulators clamber into a carriage, it can easily turn into a pumpkin. Their approaches to the problem are not an aberration but a symptom of a larger difference. Obama is not [...]

Whilst perusing Talking Points Memo earlier, I noted that Josh Marshall and company had won the George Polk award. Having never heard of said prize and casually presuming that it was in some sort of blog-specific category, I didn’t bother to click through. Will Bunch‘s post, “A landmark day for bloggers — and the future [...]

The Unfogged gang has three posts in as many days about a wildly popular new blog about which I was previously unaware called Stuff White People Like. It’s the kind of blog only white people could like: a blog about white people written by white people for other white people that makes fun of white [...]

Andy Towle (shared by Chris Abraham via Google Reader) thinks Barack Obama has a Joe Biden situation: Barack Obama has been lauded over the course of this campaign for his beautiful speeches. On Saturday, in Wisconsin, Obama made a speech with uncanny similarities to a speech given by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick when he was [...]

As has been anticipated for some time, Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia.

There’s an entertaining column from John Broder in the New York Times this morning on how the methods for selecting nominating delegates differs between the Democrats and Republicans and how this reflects the parties themselves. The two parties’ nominating systems reflect the philosophical differences between them. Or, as a prominent Republican strategist, Mike Murphy, suggested, [...]

I’m not sure what to make of the NYT feature “Friends Say Drugs Played Only Bit Part for Obama.” In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and mentors from his high school and Occidental recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug [...]

Yesterday’s episode of NPR’s Science Friday, timely considering the New York Times article from yesterday, was on the subject of the next generation of biofuels. Ethanol produced from corn or sugar cane or diesel fuel produced from soybeans is the first generation of biofuels. The next generation of biofuels are more efficient than the previous [...]

Ann Coulter’s speech this year wasn’t on the official CPAC docket but was instead sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation and others. Still, there was a packed house with long lines that I wouldn’t have bothered to stand in were I not able to bypass them with press credentials. As is her shtick, she threw [...]

While New York does not allow gay marriage, it must recognize marriages performed elsewhere — even other countries — a appeals court judge has ruled. A New York appellate court ruled Friday that valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York, just as the law recognizes those of heterosexual couples [...]

A Washington Examiner editorial asks, “Has Bush lost his spine on earmarks?” It calls on the president “to make good on his promise to ‘end this practice’ once and for all.” This, of course, presumes Bush had a spine to lose on this issue, which seems to rely on facts not in evidence. Certainly, nothing [...]

One of my Atlantic Council colleagues forwards a report that David Petraeus is being considered for the Supreme Allied Commander post. A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious [...]

The New York Times editorial board makes a rather bizarre argument: President Bush is discussing a new agreement with Baghdad that would govern the deployment of American troops in Iraq. With so many Americans adamant about bringing our forces home as soon as possible, a sentiment we strongly share, Mr. Bush must not be allowed [...]

There’s been a lot of discussion around the blogosphere about the, um, difficulty some brick-and-mortar bookstores seem to have in ensuring that customers can acquire a copy of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Amazon sales rank as of this posting: [...]

Today’s NYT marks the start of the “War Torn” feature, “A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.” The first installment begins with the obligatory gut wrenching anecdotes and then gets to the point: The New [...]

Fred Thompson showed up at last night’s presidential debate enthusiastic, prepared, and seeming to care. If this keeps up, George Mitchell might need to investigate him for use of performance enhancing substances. [...] Mr. Thompson leavened his responses with the kind of one-liners that many supporters had hoped he would use sooner. Asked about the [...]