Tuesday morning, between 9:30 am and 11:00 am EST, I am hosting a conversation at the New America Foundation with New Yorker Washington correspondent Jane Mayer about her news-busting new book on the torture-promoting War Council ecosystem that Vice President Cheney and one of his most tenacious consigliari, David Addington, constructed after 9-11.
China has some intense security — sort of the opposite of what I found not long ago in Kuwait. While heading home from the Middle East, I walked through security boarding a United Airlines plane and the buzzer went off. No problem — I was just waved through and wasn’t searched.
I’ll be spending most of the day on Sunday flying back to the United States after a couple of eye-opening weeks in Asia. But a hat tip to the 99-year old Michael DeBakey who just passed away and who did change the world with his pioneering work on heart transplants and bypass operations.
I’m over in Hong Kong with a crazy schedule and round of meetings — but rumors, good ones, still reach me. The latest — which I wholeheartedly endorse — is that Senator Chuck Hagel may be on the verge of endorsing Barack Obama for President.
I made a bad mistake at a wedding not too long ago — in Big Fork, Montana. I was sitting next to the sister-in-law of the bride who had to give a toast, something with flourish and some punch.
There has been a ton of interest among the people I have met in China over the last ten days in the US presidential elections.
One of my good friends in Dem foreign policy circles is Rand Beers. He constantly makes sense to me and seems (thus far) immune from some of the insecurities I often see among Dems who are trying to posture on defense and security issues.
Former Senator Jesse Helms may have died today in a mortal sense — but the brand of pugnacious nationalism that he seeded in America’s contemporary politics lives on in his former legal adviser John Bolton, Dick Cheney and others. We will be battling Helms as an ideological force for decades to come.
I’ve had a tough time getting on the internet the last couple of days here in Guilin, China — but eureka! It worked this morning. I’m told that Brian Beutler, who was shot three times in a mugging the other morning, is making good progress.
