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Imagine what would happen if Mir Hussein Moussavi disappeared into Evin prison this afternoon and then a few days later Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged to say that Moussavi, under the kind of harsh questioning necessary to protect the Islamic Republic from outside subversion, had confessed to being a paid agent of the CIA. Then imagine Ahmadinejad [...]

Here’s another fascinating tidbit from yesterday’s health reform message from the White House to Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.): President Obama is proposing that the recommendations passed down by the advisory panel on Medicare payment policy take effect without congressional action.
To identify and achieve additional savings, I am also open to your [...]

Here’s a statement from Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of progressive Jewish lobby J Street, on the Obama/Netanyahu meet:
J Street commends President Barack Obama on restating today his commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his serious intent to pursue a viable and sustainable resolution to the broader Arab-Israeli conflict.
Peace and security for [...]

About two weeks ago I was talking to an Obama administration official about the prospects for Pakistan accepting a larger contingent of U.S. counterinsurgency trainers. The administration was pressing somewhat gingerly, the official indicated, not wanting to push the Pakistani military too far — it would be counterproductive to imply too strongly that the Pakistanis [...]

So an Arkansas state senator calls Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “that Jew,” and in the course of explaining away the remark through a folksy defense of “traditional values” — apparently this gentleman thinks Andy Griffith was an anti-Semite or something — he defends himself by saying, “I don’t use a teleprompter and occasionally I put [...]

Whatever you do, don’t miss The New York Times’ epic interview with a Pakistani Taliban tactician about what has become “a seamless conflict” on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The tactician is based out of Wana, in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but spends much of his time focused on Afghanistan. His superiors, for [...]

The Obama administration’s push to phase out subsidies for private student loan companies and replace them with more efficient direct lending from the government is causing some serious agita among big banks that fear lost business, as The New York Times reported last week.
But curiously enough, the large student loan firms’ eagerness to protect their [...]

Did you ever do something that, with the benefit of  hindsight, seemed really, really stupid and you wondered what exactly you were thinking at the time?
Imagine how the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation must feel these days. The same agency that now says it needs to borrow $500 billion in emergency funds to take over failed [...]

Mark Thoma at Economist’s View shows us the tent cities now sprouting up in Sacramento, Calif., not far from the small town where he grew up. Those tents are homes now for people who lost their previous dwellings to foreclosures. Below the picture, you can click on an image of the tent cities that grew [...]

Congress is finally getting around to asking a question it should have asked long ago, before doling out billions of dollars to troubled insurance giant AIG – Where, exactly, is that money going?
A Senate panel pressed the Federal Reserve on that very point Thursday. even threatening to cut off future bailout funds (god forbid AIG [...]