(photo credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) I wrote this article today for Salon.com reviewing President Obama’s performance over the past year. I hope you’ll read the entire piece — but here’s the intro plus a bit more: Great Challenges Make Great Leaders Yes, Obama inherited a presidency in bad shape.

I’m down blogging today at the Hard Bean Coffee & Booksellers Cafe in Annapolis, Maryland on what is a beautiful day to think about Martin Luther King, Jr.

I haven’t watched the Senate race in Massachusetts all that closely. I was impressed with the smart policy work, particularly in foreign policy issues, that Alan Khazei’s campaign put out. Khazei touched on a lot of issues that the better known but more issues mum Martha Coakley put out.

I took this photo while flying from Dubai to San Francisco, and it reminded me of the rock gardens at Ryoanji in Kyoto. Hope some of you enjoy it. Always interested in the great pics you take from your own windows.

I am glad President Bush is joining forces with President Clinton to marshal American resources to help earthquake-stricken Haiti. Clearly, he has a different crowd of followers than Bill Clinton who may be motivated by his “just send your cash” appeal complete with grin (?).

Senator Carl Levin, just back from a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan which he took with Senator Al Franken, sees significant gains in America’s position in Afghanistan.

The threat by Google to pull out of China because of Chinese espionage efforts to hack into the gmail accounts of human rights activists has captured enormous attention. Of course, anyone who has paid any consistent attention to China and its massive growth would know that the Google revelations are really nothing new.

Gregory Craig — deal maker on Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, key architect of Obama’s “engage everyone — even the bad guys” position in the campaign, and the conscience of the the national security staff in Obama’s White House who said that the public really needed to know that American officials waterboarded…

This week I chatted with Arab American Institute President James Zogby on his program Viewpoint about Pat Robertson’s hateful comments about Haitians in the aftermath of staggering tragedy. To remind, Robertson said that Haiti was a cursed nations because Haitian slaves rebelling against their slaveholders and French control did a deal with the devil.

Tom Kutsch is a research associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.