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.
AP is reporting a very important story today about Indonesia’s battle for control over H5N1 avian flu strains with the World Health Organization. WHO should have access to the viral material and should share it with pharmaceutical companies working on a vaccine. But Indonesia’s gripes are legitimate and deserve to be taken seriously.
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.
It was heavy-lifting all the way, but the House funding bill that funds America’s operations in Iraq but requires withdrawal in 2008, passed today in a 218-212 vote.
I will be in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at Dickinson College Saturday evening for the “central Pennsylvania debut” of a new fictional film on Iraq by Director Philip Haas titled The Situation. Ticket information follows here — but just prior to the show at 7 p.m.
Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is about to get former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s endorsement. This is pretty big news and strengthens Clinton’s position in Iowa significantly. Vilsack — while a second tier presidential contender — is nonetheless an important part of a credible heartland strategy.
