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Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Must Be Lying About Lying!

By | 06.16.09 | 11:06 am

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 More…

Obama Proposes Giving Medicare Panel Recomendations Force of Law

By | 06.03.09 | 4:06 pm

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

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J Street on the Obama-Netanyahu Meeting

By | 05.18.09 | 3:13 pm

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

More…

The U.S. Special Forces Training Mission In Pakistan Expands

By | 05.15.09 | 5:51 pm

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 More…

Unprompted Anti-Semitism

By | 05.14.09 | 2:52 pm

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 More…

The War Through the Taliban’s Eyes

By | 05.05.09 | 9:29 am

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 More…

Fight Over Student Loan Reform Isn’t Opening K Street’s Spigots — Yet

By | 04.22.09 | 1:14 pm

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 More…

FDIC Strapped Because It Quit Collecting Premiums in Good Times

By | 03.11.09 | 5:41 pm

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 More…

Tent Cities of Today – And Yesterday

By | 03.10.09 | 8:54 am

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 More…

A Query Long Past Due – Where Does AIG’s Money Go?

By | 03.06.09 | 8:47 am

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 More…