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The Global Citizen
Or should I say, George Orwell?
Senator Barack Obama, who along with Senator Clinton and former Senator John Edwards , make up the troika of Democratic frontrunners, began running TV ads in Iowa last night.
While everyone in the GOP is holding their breath for the official announcement of "Mr. Right", former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney , is quietly and carefully building a political base in two key early states: Iowa and New Hampshire.
The WP blog carries an important piece from Gellman and Becker titled "Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power." It highlights how the VP has been at the center of the Administrations interrogation policy development since January 11th 2002, the day CIA officials raised the challenges facing Guantanamo interrogators. The bloggers go on to note that:
I am writing from the newly painted intern office to say that we are at it again. For the past week we have been bugging Congressional staffers incessantly during appropriations week (of all times!) to get them to sponsor H.Res.213, which supports the creation of the U.N. Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS).
Many years ago, John Lennon wrote and recorded a wonderful song, "Nobody Told Me." Among the lyrics include this stanza: Nobody told me there'd be days like these; Nobody told me there'd be days like these; Strange days indeed...
I would not be at all surprised if those lyrics are bouncing around the brain and shiny dome of "America's Mayor" today; needles to say, the GOP presidential hopeful has had a very difficult week.
A reader at The Washington Note pointed out that yesterday was World Refugee Day. To mark the occasion, the UN High Commission on Refugees released a report that counts over 10 million asylum-seekers this year.
That's a 14% increase over last year, thanks mostly to the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria. This is one "surge" that deserves serious attention.
As you may have gathered from some of my previous writings, I am a native of Detroit, Michigan. Though my wife and son and I live in a Washington, D.C. suburb of Maryland, I am a Motown guy through and through. From my choice in music - Seger over Springsteen and the Four Tops over any other type of R&B -- to my passion for the various Detroit sports teams - I may be an inside-the-beltway observer, but you can't take the Motor City street cred away from me (even my four-year old son loves the Tigers and Red Wings; wonder how that happened?)
Michiganders have a proud history of senior statesmen. From Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg , who famously said, "Politics stops at the water's edge" to Democratic Senator Phil Hart, who became known as the "conscience of the Senate" for his principled leadership and grace in his 17 years of public service to one of The Wolverine state's current Senators, Carl Levin .
In today's Washington Post, Levin has an op-ed, "Lincoln's Example for Iraq." Before I get to his interesting commentary, you'll have to excuse me for a moment.
Detached from reality; surely that is the only explanation for the conduct of the member of Congress and/or their staffer when they added language to the House Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that would limit economic aid to some countries supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) .
Yes you did read that correctly. At a time when the U.S. image in the world is seemingly at an all time low; at a time when we have profound foreign policy/national security challenges to face from Iraq to Climate Change to Darfur , a member of Congress decided to win political points with a few dead-enders who think we can still afford to bash globally embraced international institutions like the ICC. Forgive me for saying that the responsible (or should I say irresponsible) individual seems to be living in a time warp! We are not living in the 1990's when it was "the economy stupid" and the ICC existed only on paper.
General/President Musharraf has, at least since 9/11, been viewed as an American stooge by Pakistanis of all political persuasions and at today's rally in support of Pakistan's suspended chief justice the demonstrators visually represented this sentiment.
They did so by burning an American flag at the rally.
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