By Steve Clemons

Last Thursday morning, I sent a couple of questions to the “Ask the State Department” site that was planning an online session with John Bolton.

“Citizens should not fear their governments. Governments should fear their citizens,” V said. I don’t normally recommend movies, but see this film. Revolutionary, and relevant, on many levels. It’s violent, but that’s not worth missing the movie over.

This is interesting. Recently, I was up near American University which is on one of the corners of Nebraska and Massachusetts Avenues in Washington. The Ambassador of Japan, Ryozo Kato, lives at 4000 Nebraska Avenue, which is close to the opposite corner from AU. I’ve been there a lot.

Economist James Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair at UT Austin, has written a brilliant review of two books — the first The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs and the second The Global Class War by Jeff Faux — in the latest American Prospect.

My posting on the Stephen Walt/John Mearsheimer zinger article that is sweeping around is premature as I want to write something more coherent than I can do at this moment (now rushing to catch plane). But in the mean time, read this — by Daniel Levy of the Geneva Initiative.

Today, John Bolton is manning the “Ask the State Department” desk. I have just submitted a couple of questions to Bolton. Here is your chance to do the same. — Steve Clemons Travel Update: I am flying to Orlando this morning and will be speaking to the Orlando Area Committee on Foreign Relations this evening….

What follows below (this is pdf) ran in today’s local Washington Examiner, which has a surprisingly strong roster of diverse op-ed writers producing good content. For some bizarre reason, however, the Examiner is completely failing to link any of this great content to its webpage.

(Flynt Leverett on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer) Margaret Warner, Senior Correspondent on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, had a great segment last night on President Bush and whether the character and degree of Iraq’s sectarian convulsions, or “civil war” in the view of most. Leverett affirms that a civil war is underway….

Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff at the State Department and 16-year aide and friend to Colin Powell, was interviewed yesterday on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Lateline.

(Markos Moulitsas Zuniga when in US Army, 1989-1992) Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft said on January 6, 2005 that we may be seeing “incipient civil war” in Iraq. David Frum misquotes Scowcroft and wrestles with TWN over the difference between imminent civil war and incipient civil war in early January 2005.