Editors at The Atlantic shared notes about the best books they read during the past year. These books did not need to be published in 2012 — but read during the last twelve months. My selection was Adam Goodheart’s 1861: The Civil War Awakening.

Senator Chuck Hagel hasn’t  spent much time at Human Rights Campaign dinners. I wish he had gone — or better yet, had been invited by the organization to speak and share his views on gays in American life.

Chuck Hagel voted in favor of John Bolton’s nomination before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters “I am the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, clothed in immense power!” one can imagine Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi thinking after his jaw-dropping power grab these last few days.

Three years ago, I wrote a piece for The American Interest grading President Barack Obama’s foreign policy performance after one year. I gave him a poor mark as I believed then that in assessing Obama, only Iran mattered and not much constructive had happened on that track. Stanford University realist and former George W.

Phil McCarten/Reuters In terms of total increase in “federal debt to GDP” under U.S. presidents in the post-World War II era, Republican presidents during their terms have contributed far more to the debt load of the nation than Democrats. Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W.

During a major foreign policy address earlier today at the Virginia Military Institute, GOP presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney paid tribute to one of the school’s most distinguished graduates, former Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State as well as Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.

In a short bit, I’ll be interviewing Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper in one of the Allstate-National Journal-Atlantic Heartland Monitor forums that Ron Brownstein has pulled together before the debates. The schedule is pasted below. My bit with Hickenlooper, the first brewpub master since Sam Adams to become governor of a state, starts at 10 a.m….

Denver is buzzing … not.

A new poll issued by the Arab American Institute (pdf here) yesterday and conducted by JZ Analytics reports that President Obama maintains a commanding lead over Governor Mitt Romney in the election but that Obama’s edge has dropped by 15% since the 2008 election.