Reading Vaclav Havel’s “To The Castle and Back” yesterday, I got wildly distracted, and found myself YouTubing my DC power/intellect crush: the luminous Samantha Power. Havel’s book is a tremendous read — scattered and tangential, but fascinating nonetheless.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Here are my thoughts from an exchange with Keith Olbermann on Bill Clinton’s surprise trip to Pyongyang to secure the release of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

Bill Clinton is flying back to the US with just pardoned journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea.

Tonight at about 8:15 pm EST and then again at 10:15 pm EST on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, I will be discussing Bill Clinton’s successful trip to North Korea that not only secured pardons and expected release of imprisoned journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling — but may have brought other constructive currents to the US-North…

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry might have brought Senatorial gravitas to the US-North Korea relationship and have opened connections for Pyongyang beyond the White House.

Lehigh University International Relations Department Chair Rajan Menon recently published an informative report for the Century Foundation called “The China-Russia Relationship: What It Involves, Where It Is Headed, And How It Matters For The United States.” The report provides a useful framework for conceptualizing the relationships among China, Russia, and the United States.

Tomorrow morning, at about 7:15 am EST, I’ll be chatting about Hillary Clinton’s seven nation tour through Africa on WNYC/National Public Radio’s “The Takeaway.

Amjad Atallah directs the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Hamas Chief Khaled Meshaal told Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey in an interview that “We along with other Palestinian factions in consensus agreed upon accepting a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. This is the national program….

I’m not meaning to mock anyone with this — but here again is another priceless picture from a TWN reader visiting Okinawa, Japan — which is speckled with nearly 40 separate US military institutions.

This from a reader this morning in Okinawa, Japan. Someone call Conan O’Brien quick.