Holy Indian reservation roulette wheels Batman! 

The newly launched Republic Report, an anti-corruption blog focusing on how self-interested dollars are warping the public-interest responsibilities of America's democratic institutions, has actually hired convicted felon Jack Abramoff to be one of its lead bloggers. 

Yes,...

Are Hispanic Americans on Romney's call list?

While there have been a long slog of GOP debates, and people may be asking why any more encounters matter at this point -- Hispanic Americans want their turn at bat and are working hard...

As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, US military officers -- incumbents and retired -- and others in DC's firmament condemn the US soldiers that apparently urinated on dead Taliban militants, I'm wondering how long it will take...

A senior White House official has confirmed that Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administration's next phase China policy.

While the Departments of State and Treasury have held important functional roles in conducting the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue meetings, raising the bilateral status...

In the latest issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, former Clinton administration National Security Council staffer and Georgetown University international affairs professor Charles Kupchan has published an interesting essay titled "Grand Strategy: The...

Iraq surge architects Frederick and Kimberly Kagan have published an informed, provocative, yet thoughtful commentary, "Is Iraq Lost?," in the latest Weekly Standard.

The authors open with a blast at what...

(photo credit: TSA)

James Fallows is one of the least rufflable people I know -- and yet, this cryptic criticism of TSA people-handling made it into one of his posts a couple of days ago (the...

Something for those who think Christianity and Islam are deeply divided, a holiday card greeting I received from Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States:

In the name of...

Inspired by The Atlantic's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide in which the publication's food and culture senior editor Corby Kummer curated gift idea offerings from the great and the good, I have some ideas of my own.

North Korea's despotic "Dear Leader" has died and is now succeeded by the newly dubbed "Great Successor."  It may be time for the makers of Team America World Police to issue a sequel to memorialize...

President Obama's speech at the United Nations yesterday paled in comparison to the soaring, expectation raising addresses he gave early in his administration, particularly in Cairo, but also at past UN General Assembly gatherings. The President has lost his groove.

Obama opened with FDR's line that "We have...

Bleak views of the U.S. economy abound.  Real unemployment for August -- which, according to a monthly newsletter report prepared by Leo Hindery, includes discouraged workers (3.9 million), part-time of-necessity workers (8.8 million) and marginally attached...

Yesterday, my friend Juan Cole tweeted this comment:

CNN finally fed in CNN Int'l on Libya. But guys, enough with the negativity! Why can't Westerners be happy about Arab revolutions? #Libya

Activists whom I admire at Liberty4Libya -- who have doggedly provided...

Sometimes Iowa picks 'em -- and some times not. Today NOT.

In the GOP-sort out straw poll held in Ames, Iowa, Tea Party diva Michele Bachmann bested libertarian favorite Ron Paul as the winner. But more importantly, no one in the top 5 had any real chance of leading...

Unbelievable.  The scripting of this high stakes drama between House Speaker John Boehner balancing the White House on one side and the never compromise, never surrender Tea Party on the other keeps getting better...

(photo credit: Gary Burke)

"Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be," General Douglas MacArthur said in August 1962.

(photo credit: Steve Clemons, The Washington Note)

(This article is appearing simultaneously at TheAtlantic.com)

News is breaking that the prosecutor's case in the rape allegations against former IMF Director and French political kingpin

This morning I'm sitting in the Coffee Cat in Easton, Maryland. Frederick Douglass was born nine miles from here. The great former US Senator Birch Bayh -- who led on Title IX...

My good friend Fay Lewis died last September, and I've been mulling her passing the last many months. For years, I had grown used to Fay calling me up and shaking me out of...

Yesterday I received the distressing news that the father of blogging in Iran, Hossein Derakshan (aka Hoder) -- the young person who had helped create the on-ramps for hundreds if not thousands of bloggers inside Iran...