By Steve Clemons

That’s Buddy on the roof. It’s warmer there. Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner is on the left and Annie the kid sis is on the right.

Tonight, I toasted Senator Frank Lautenberg when I learned that he had sent President Barack Obama a letter asking that the media no longer be blocked from greeting, reporting on, and photographing the returning flag-draped caskets of American service men and women killed in combat abroad.

My New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy, who is in Tel Aviv and voted today, is quoted in the segment below and offers two take-aways from the results of Israel’s elections, the winner of which is still being sorted out and will be disputed no matter the outcome.

In June 2008, I asked Flynt Leverett — former top Middle East analyst and policy practitioner at the CIA, State Department and George W. Bush’s National Security Council — what he thought the next President of the United States should do “on day one” when it came to the nation’s foreign policy priorities.

I spent about 20 minutes with Neal Conan on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” today discussing Israel’s elections and why I’m ready for Netanyahu to lead Israel’s government — either because he’ll find his mature, Nixonian, do-a-deal, makeover side — or because he’ll be so flamboyantly destructive of Israel’s and America’s interests that he’ll finally…

It’s always wise to read up on what one’s supposed global and ideological rivals are writing and thinking. Along this line, for example, I think that reading Karim Sadjadpour‘s fascinating expose on Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is essential reading.

At 3:40 pm EST, I will be chatting live with Neal Conan and his callers on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” regarding the upcoming Israel elections and what impact they might have on the Obama administration’s choices in the Middle East.

Now I know why John Podesta is so unique — and how and why skillful princes use him. . .

Toles (c) 2009 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved. I think it’s our responsibility as American citizens to critique and applaud government’s moves as we see fit.

This month, the Japan Society of New York, one of America’s leading platforms for Japan-related cultural, political, and economic programming announced that its next president would not be an American citizen — which has always been the case — but would rather be a Japanese citizen, and no ordinary Japanese citizen at that.