We will fondly remember our nation's potential to be a force for good in the world under President Obama, but we will always wonder why that potential was never actualized.
This was not a good week for public figures with notable heads of hair. The boyishly coiffed Tom DeLay caused jaws to drop all across America with his rump-shaking cha-cha to "Wild Thing" on Dancing With the Stars. Breck Girl-turned-Cad John Edwards saw his already-tarnished reputation further sullied by the release of details of his affair with Rielle Hunter, including a promised post-Elizabeth rooftop wedding featuring the Dave Matthews Band. And the idiosyncratically maned Donald Trump made headlines by allowing Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to pitch a tent on his Bedford, New York estate. But it was follicly-challenged columnist David Broder who took the prize for the week's most ludicrous act: criticizing President Obama for "his determination to rely on rational analysis, rather than narrow decisions." God forbid. It was enough to make your hair stand on end.
I'm glad I didn't go see the Dalai Lama today. I'm going to give the ticket to a friend, and he can tell me about the experience.
Is the UN outdated, bloated, and over? I suspect so. By having meetings with dictators, we are showcasing people who would be marginalized if we didn't bring them an audience of global media.
They're the same age, they can be difficult to comprehend, and are known to give their audiences more than they bargained for. What gives?
Not every friend of the United States wears a suit and tie, and sleeping in a tent doesn't make you an enemy of American values (just ask the boy scouts).
Today, even though Russia and the United States have made a mutual commitment to "achieving a nuclear free world," there are many bedeviling details and hurdles ahead.
A day after the stunning security breach, U.N. officials were still attempting to sort out how it was allowed to happen.
Moammar Gadhafi droned on for 90 minutes yesterday in rambling prose barely befitting a head of state. Later, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also gave long-winded remarks.
Only a few blocks from Broadway, Colonel Gaddafi rambled on for more than an hour and a half, tearing out pages of the U.N. Charter and shaking his hands in anger before the UN General Assembly.
The furor over al-Megrahi's release has only deepened the suspicions of deal making and compromise that have tainted the West's decade-long efforts to rehabilitate Libya.
How does a former pariah state deal with gross human rights abuses of the past? The UK, U.S. and Italy should encourage Libya to address the past, rather than allow all to be forgiven in the name of petrodollars.
Rather than the "mad dog" he was called by Reagan, Muammar Qaddafi is far better described as a cross between a cat with nine lives and a sly fox.
How did the world's longest serving dictator make it from diplomatic deep freeze to preparing to make his first ever visit to the U.S. to address the U.N. General Assembly in September?
Megrahi's release and hero's welcome in Libya, along with the leak of two letters from Britain's justice minister, have prompted calls for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to stop evading the issue.
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We will push for the Libyan government to sell their compound in Englewood and clear out of the neighborhood. We don't want a terrorist-funding government in our midst.
As bystanders to tragedies like the Lockerbie disaster, you and I have no moral weight; we are outsiders. But we aren't outsiders in our own lives, where we face moral choices just as tangled.
Imagine if Bernie Madoff were to have cancer and he were to be released like the Lockerbie killer? There would, no doubt, rightly be outrage in the streets.
The Brits are in a mess: They have freed the Lockerbie bomber for reasons that nobody truly, or reasonably, believes. And yet, maybe they know what they're doing.
I believe that my local Jewish community should keep an open mind about Muammar Kaddafi moving in.
