Happy New Year!
It might be a good idea to begin 2009 thinking happy thoughts. Here is my contribution:
There are now just 19 days left in the Bush administration.
We were talking Monday about the unexpected effects of the foreclosure crisis, like skateboarders in California taking advantage of empty swimming pools behind vacant homes to practice their craft. Here’s another: Gambling is falling in popularity as more people choose instead to pay their bills, Bloomberg reports. That More…
Confirming what many have been saying for years, a new survey finds that teenagers who pledge to forgo sexual activity until marriage were just as likely to engage in premarital sex as those who do not. Adolescents who take the pledge are also less likely than their More…
There’s no sugarcoating this. Israel is looking like a country that is quickly losing its mind. Consider this statement:
In an interview Tuesday, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said Israel’s main goal is to “destroy completely” what she called a “terrorist gang.”
I truly truly hope this is empty rhetoric. Because More…
Gershon Shafir has a really perceptive post at the group-blog adjunct to Informed Comment asking what happens in Gaza as the Israeli bombing progresses past its third day. Consider:
First, Israel is about to exhaust obvious and legitimate military targets, especially those available for aerial bombardment, even under their
It took until after his corruption scandal-induced resignation, but interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave an interview in September to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth urging Israel to negotiate a comprehensive peace with its neighbors or be consigned to endless war. The New York Review of Books translated More…
This is the Obama transition’s official statement on Gaza as of right now, courtesy of chief transition national-security spokeswoman Brooke Anderson:
“President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time.”
In October, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan expressed skepticism over the prospect of signing up tribal militias, Anbar Province-style, to fight the Taliban. Over the last several days, it’s become increasingly clear that a Sons-of-Afghanistan style approach — the recruitment of tribal auxiliaries — is More…
The Obama transition formally announced Jack Lew and Jim Steinberg as deputy secretaries of state just now. On Lew, my pal Mark Kleiman, who knows the guy, remarks, “He’s just one of those people who aren’t even tempted to cut corners, or at least that’s the way he More…
Breaking news: Federal Judge Richard J. Leon just ruled that five Algerians held without charge at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 have to be released. (Daphne’s been covering the case.) American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero comments:
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