By Steve Clemons

Denver is buzzing … not.

A new poll issued by the Arab American Institute (pdf here) yesterday and conducted by JZ Analytics reports that President Obama maintains a commanding lead over Governor Mitt Romney in the election but that Obama’s edge has dropped by 15% since the 2008 election.

Reuters/Lucas Jackson After President Obama’s moving UN General Assembly speech that started with a story of who US Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been in terms of his life’s passion for the Middle East and North Africa, the Romney camp issued a statement from former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky: In his…

This is a guest note by Emma Green who works for The Atlantic and is a 2012 graduate of Georgetown University.

Joe Cirincione, one of the nation’s sharpest minds on nuclear weapons policy, just highlighted in Foreign Policy yet another big gulp moment in the viral video of Mitt Romney triggering shock and awe (wrong kind of awe though) across the political world.

First of all, Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner has turned 10 and is in fantastic shape.

Reuters Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan has accomplished something quite important. At both conventions, in the corner rooms of Charlotte and Tampa organized by media groups and political activist outfits, serious discussions unfolded about the real state of the economy and the different policy approaches Americans needed to consider.

Reuters I thought President Obama’s decision to surge troop levels in Afghanistan was a strategic mistake and only deepened the black hole of costs in blood and treasure that the US had already invested and raised expectations in Afghanistan of an equilibrium in their lives that that would tilt more toward jobs and hope than…

Reuters/Benoit Tessier The New Yorker has just published a gripping, must read piece for those following the horrible convulsions inside Syria titled “The War Within” by Jon Lee Anderson on the diverse array of bosses, ideologues, thugs and strategists animating the Syrian opposition today.

I don’t speak Arabic — though I recently ordered the beginner module from Rosetta Stone which still sits in its wrapper on my desk shelf. (I am in the Arab world a lot however and learning more each trip.) Perhaps after the conventions.