Joe Klein has written one of the best 100 day nutshell reviews of the Obama administration’s performance I have read. Klein’s take squares almost perfectly with a piece I have coming out in the next few days in World Politics Review — not there yet though.
Joseph Margulies in the Los Angeles Times offers anyone who wants to defend the Bush administration’s embrace of torture a chilling retort. His bottom line: the administration sold out the values Americans cherish most to torture not a kingpin in the al Qaeda network, but a clerk. Margulies writes: First, they beat him.
Barack Obama’s press conference last night punctuating the ritualistic 100-day review of new presidencies showed this President at his best I think — thoughtful, human, willing to take quite a roster of questions, and well. . .wonky. But Guardian US editor at large Michael Tomasky found a pretty significant error in Obama’s commentary last night….
Wow. The Democrats — if they ever bring in Al Franken — will control 60 seats in the US Senate fair and square.
I have had a couple of overwhelming weeks and haven’t been able to post until now what I would have preferred on this debate about George W. Bush administration torture policy accountability.
The Washington Note‘s actual image has made it on to Rachel Maddow’s terrific MSNBC show, been highlighted on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, and has popped up on Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room on CNN, and George StephanopoulosThis Week. . .but there is a new first for TWN.
On Monday, 27 April, I will be co-chairing a major national policy forum on US-Saudi economic and strategic perspectives on the Middle East and global economic and security system. We have quite a line-up which I’ll share below.
(Matt Wuerker, Politico, reprinted with permission) Matt Wuerker, who was just announced yesterday as a Pulitzer finalist, did this great sketch of the Cuba embargo “wall” that America has built around itself. It’s brilliant. Enjoy Matt’s “Wuerking Drawings” at Politico.
Anne-Marie Slaughter had one of the coolest jobs that met at the nexus of public policy and academia. She was Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
A loyal TWN reader sent in these pics he took yesterday of a pretty handsome bald eagle. They were taken at Washoe Lake in Carson City, Nevada — a place I hang out from time to time.
