By Steve Clemons

This is a pre-announcement of a blog in the making, The Havana Note — which is not up yet but will be before long.

This is just amusing. Catch C-Span’s creative “visual” commentary on Cheney’s role in Bush’s world.

I’m back.

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman was one of the headliners at a star-studded annual “Opinions Award” dinner sponsored by The Week in partnership with the Aspen Institute on Tuesday night.

Interesting. In a 50-48 vote, proponents of an Iraq withdrawal timeline prevailed against an attempt by Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) to rip out that language in the Iraq supplemental spending bill being debated and voted on today. Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) joined the Dems.

Cheney and his team are disurbingly impressive in their ability to constantly get away with sabotaging the work and efforts of President Bush and his team.

Senator Chuck Hagel has fired a warning shot across the White House’s bow. On George Stephanopoulos’ This Week, Senator Hagel expressed frustration that Bush was ignoring Congress’s steps to drive a new direction in America’s Iraq engagement.

Last year, I wrote an article in the Washington Post, “The Rise of Japan’s Thought Police,” suggesting that Japan’s right-wing was harassing important intellectuals, political leaders, business leaders, and other important voices that were engaged in a fair debate about Japan’s relations with China and about the future character of Japan’s imperial institution.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey is speaking at Yale University next Thursday afternoon. If you are nearby, you should go. Woolsey will be speaking for he Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism on Thursday, 29 March, at 4:15 pm in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101, 63 High Street in New Haven.

There is a great website out there, Poem of the Week, that is run anonymously by a good friend of mine. This week’s poem is Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born in 1792 and was “a renowned atheist and proponent of ‘free love’ when such things were decidedly unfashionable.