By Steve Clemons

Booz Allen Vice President R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence during the Clinton administration, still has his security clearance.

Pajamas Media has an “exclusive” movie review of the film, 300, by former Tennessee Senator and presidential wannabe (maybe) Fred Thompson. Thompson writes: The comic book movie 300 about the Spartans and the Persians in 480 AD is still breaking box-office records. Now it seems the rulers of modern-day Persia, Iran, are not amused.

I just got a scoop on who the next publisher of The American Conservative is going to be — and it’s an intriguing choice. I read The American Conservative because Vice President Cheney hates the publication and thinks that its editorialists run in the same gaggle of “Not-Republicans-Enough-for-Cheney” as Chuck Hagel and Chris Shays.

I think that Israel Prime Minister Olmert’s resistance to talk to the new Palestinian unity government ‘may’ be a charade disguising quite a bit of informal, off the books negotiations as everyone I speak to from the Middle East sees a deal on Palestine in the works — in about 18 months.

Yosri Fouda, an important Al Jazeera journalist who interviewed both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, has written a very interesting note today in The Sunday Times of London on what may be driving KSM’s extraordinary admissions during secret hearings at Guantanamo Bay.

Folks, I have been off of email and the cell phone for five days as the ability to get on email was just too ridiculously expensive and difficult in Havana. I paid $8.00 to get to one unimportant email out of many hundreds.

Former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson taught me a term recently that I did not know about — the “non-paper” paper.

I’ve been in Senator Harry Reid‘s territory for the last day and a half — enjoying watching the unlikely co-mingling of a massive number of NASCAR fans mixing with tweed and tie-wearing academics from the Western Political Science Association.

When Matsushita purchased MCA/Universal Studios in 1990, many worried that the Japanese business would distort, censor, or otherwise direct creative content at the giant movie and entertainment house towards politically safe — rather than provocative and edgy — material.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has told a number of senior national security officials — current and former — that he is shutting down (or at least significantly shrinking) the Rumsfeld-Cambone-Feith-Boykin intelligence operation.