I am writing to you because of a program on the new Al Jazeera cable news network. I turned it on just to see what it was like, and happened upon a David Frost interview of the Cuban ballet dancer… Read More »Recent Letter to Congerss
A New York Times headline today sums of US Middle Eastern policy for the last 50 years, “Chaos in Middle East Grows as the U.S. Focuses on Israel.” US policy toward Arab states has always been subordinate to our policy… Read More »Israel Is Center of US Middle East Policy
The stock market was upset by Fed Chairman Bernanke’s statement that he might let the Fed’s quantitative easing bond purchases taper off as the economy improves. The market’s view was apparently that a good economy was worthless; all that mattered… Read More »Bernanke stimulus v Congress sequester
I think Paula Deen has gotten a bad deal from the press and social media. Most of the criticism has been about political correctness, not about something terrible that she has physically done. There are currently two other celebrities —… Read More »Paula Deen
I was saddened by two op-eds in the NYT on Friday. David Brooks said that the only way to measure success in America is money. Paul Krugman said that technology will mean that fewer and fewer people will have more… Read More »Money in America
It is odd that the administration has sort of anonymously announced that Syria has crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons. Nothing new has happened in the last few days, except that Susan Rice and Samantha Power have been… Read More »What Next for Syria?
So far the biggest problem with NSA’s collection of meta-data from various American phone companies is that it is spying on Americans. NSA, Obama, and Congress argue that collecting just the phone numbers, locations, times, etc., in not an infringement… Read More »NSA Spying on Americans
The collection of metadata about the telephone calling habits of ordinary Americans is ust the sort of thing that an authoritarian government would need to keep its population under control. By using location and numbers called, you can tell who… Read More »Massive Intelligence Collection Threatens Liberty
All the talk about the administration’s investigation of intelligence leaks reminds me of one of my experiences about 20 years ago while I was in the Foreign Service. I was the chairman of a committee looking at violations of certain… Read More »Intelligence Leaks
On its face, the IRS scandal involving the questioning of 501(c)(4) applications by conservative Tea Party groups looks bad, and it is, but it’s not terrible. David Brooks makes a good point in his NYT column on the issue, generally critical,… Read More »IRS Scandal Overblown