By Steve Clemons

I really wish New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson would remain the globe-spanning international problem fixer that he has been for many years.

Senator Hillary Clinton’s Legislative Director, Laurie Rubiner, is mentioned prominently today in the Los Angeles Times. Such mention is long overdue for the work she did as the Health Program Director at the New America Foundation.

Hillary Clinton will be announcing she is running for President today. A good chance to see her in presidential mode will be at the New America Foundation‘s “10 Big Ideas” event — which oddly is not posted yet on New America’s website — on 31 January 2007 at the Hyatt Regency on Capital Hill.

Senator Chuck Hagel is on the verge of an announcement that he will reportedly make some time during the next two weeks — perhaps sooner rather than later — in which he will indicate whether he will run for President of the United States and whether he will run again to keep his seat as…

Chris Nelson has some great stuff on Iran tonight. I had not heard until tonight that Iran failed to bring its centrifuges on line and that the 50 they assembled blew up. Every time I post something from Chris Nelson’s Nelson Report, I get besieged by requests for it.

This is a guest post by Daniel Levy, Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation as well as Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation An Informal Diplomatic Surge: Draft Israeli-Syrian Peace Deal Revealed As Secretary Rice continues her swing through the Middle East, pointedly avoiding Damascus,

Just FYI, the Prince William County Democratic Committee (in Virginia) has put this really cool cook book together. I have a recipe in it that I highlighted at TWN a while back, the “Preparing for the Daily John Bolton Battle Smoothie.” More later.

David Sanger, White House Correspondent of the New York Times, and I helped kick off a week-long run of policy lectures and discussion organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for a group of prominent, quickly ascending Japanese Ministry of Foreign officials yesterday.

. . .or real ones anyway. Senator Chuck Hagel is a real Republican. So is former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. I know darn well how hard core a Republican Nixon Center President Dimitri Simes is.

(Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria) Now, this is a fine mess. The U.S. raided a Consulate like facility and detained five Iranian nationals in northern Iraq. U.S. intelligence apparently worried that the five Iranians were aiding insurgents inside Iraq.