By Steve Clemons

A handful of newly elected Republican US Senators have written to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trying to undo the Constitutional authority of other elected incumbent US Senators. That’s right.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Richard Lugar is on fire — telling his colleagues that the failure to ratify START will be enormously consequential to the ‘real’ national security interests of the United States.

This is a guest post by Mark Leon Goldberg, a correspondent for UN Dispatch, who is attending the NATO Summit. This post was written for UN Dispatch and The Washington Note. Among many previous avocations, Goldberg used to work with Steve Clemons at the New America Foundation.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) needs to read up on some things — like learn some facts and stuff. . .and use those facts to stop illegals from taking land that is not theirs.

This is a pretty amazing, articulate, important plea by a young student to a local school board defending his teacher Jay McDowell, disciplined for actions he took to prevent anti-gay bullying at Howell High School in Howell, Michigan. The “content of character” of this young man is off the charts.

National Public Radio’s Ari Shapiro did a great piece this morning taking a look at the traditional and new in President Obama’s foreign policy attentions.

Hillary Clinton just met with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and here is the pro forma “read out” of the meeting which the State Department distributed: Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary Clinton had a good discussion today, with a friendly and productive exchange of views on both sides.

The publicists of George W. Bush‘s memoir, Decision Points, have not put me on their distro list so I don’t yet have the book.

This was sent in by a TWN reader in Japan. It just kind of sticks with you. This dog is not my kind of dog — and I’m really not into the whole samurai scene. That said, I think that this pup could have his own TV show some day.