Foreign Service officer Peter Van Buren had an interesting week. Aside from getting a book published, he became a news-cycle celebrity of sorts in Washington — not for his book, per se, but for the fact that he might get fired for it. Reporters and bloggers quickly...
It’s hardly a secret at this late date that, while the Obama administration arrived in office promoting “a new standard of openness” in government, in practice it’s cast not sunshine, but a penumbra of gloom over the workings of Washington. Talk about a closed and...
President Obama recently reshuffled his top Washington warriors, sending CIA Director Leon Panetta, a man who knows Congress well, on to the Pentagon to replace retiring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In turn, the president is bringing in Gen. David Petraeus,...
Iraq? Where’s that? Most Americans no longer seem to know and evidently could care less, but don’t tell that to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, various key military figures and Washington officials, or some of the neocons, warrior-pundits, and liberal war-fighters...
Leave it to the State Department to soft-pedal religious extremism in the Middle East. Oh, not in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. In the most recent edition of the department's annual Report on International Religious Freedom, both are designated "Countries of...
