By Steve Clemons

Daddy has been traveling a lot lately — Silicon Valley, Berlin for the Institute for New Economic Thinking conference, Istanbul, Doha, Dubai, New York — and now back to D.C.

photo credit: Reuters Egypt’s Presidential Election Commission has deemed ten candidates unqualified for the upcoming election battle to succeed the toppled Hosni Mubarak.  They include the surprise candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater; the more radical Islamist Hazem Salah Abu Ismail; and Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s long time spymaster.

George Soros has gone to Berlin to tell the Germans that their policies are leading to the disintegration of not just the Euro, but Europe itself. Yesterday in a panel on the “Future of Europe” at a conference organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Soros said: The Euro has really broken down.

photo credit: Reuters German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Sch

photo credit:  Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk Nobuo Tanaka‘s hair is on fire.  The immediate past executive director of the International Energy Agency is on a mission attempting to alert officials in the United States, Japan, Europe, China and elsewhere that post-Fukushima Japan may be approaching an energy death spiral. Tanaka’s argument is mathematical at its core.

Politico‘s Dylan Byers has written one of the fairest, most earnest reviews of another journalist’s work that I’ve read in some time, particularly when it is about a writer who enjoys enviably high degrees of access at the White House, CIA, State Department and Pentagon.

The New York Times editors nail it today in a piece ridiculing the settlement between too-big-to-fail banks and states designed to assist anti-foreclosure efforts and underwater home mortgage victims.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all.  I’m not really all that into this festive day but I can be dragged along to get into the fun now and then.  That said, A friend has been wearing this O’Bama shirt all day today.

This morning, starting at 9:15 am EST, I’ll be having a discussion with Virgin Group founder Richard Branson on his new campaign to decriminalize drug possession and to generally knock out the rationale of the so-called Global War on Drugs.

Today, more than 800 people will attend “The US Economy Summit” organized by The Atlantic and presented at the Capital Hilton Hotel.