This is a political pitch video with Center for American Progress President and former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta introducing Judd Legum at a fundraiser at a cool restaurant-bar, Local 16, just around the corner from my house. Unfortunately, I was in Berlin and couldn’t be there.

I’ve been pouring through the archives at King’s College, London, preparing for several interviews that I have coming down the pike.

I am off to Athens, Greece this evening to meet with some folks and to ponder what Socrates, Plato and Thucydides would say about Barack Obama’s coming showdown with Bibi Netanyahu over East Jerusalem. Netanyahu is very clearly Obama’s Khrushchev.

Jon Weinberg is an intern at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force. At first glance, Iran’s new internet law – which stipulates that Iranian internet service providers (ISPs) are required to retain the entirety of their clients’ data for at least three months – appears exceedingly intimidating.

Check out this debate over at The Economist between Daniel Levy and David Frum on whether “Barack Obama’s America is now an honest broker between Israel and the Arabs.” Given the United States’ long-time alliance with Israel it is a bit ironic that this debate pits Levy on one side suggesting that the U.S.

(Dordogne where Martin Walker is avoiding Joe Biden and where Bruno, Chief of Police is set; photo credit: Don Frood) My recent vacation mates in Italy — including Helene Cooper who covers the White House for the New York Times and Elise Labott who covers Hillary Clinton and the State Department for CNN — would…

Landrum Bolling, former President of the Lilly Endowment and Earlham College, has put together a collage of commentary from four outstanding American foreign policy giants. They are former President Jimmy Carter; former Secretary of State and Treasury James A. Baker; former National Security Adviser to Presidents Ford and George H.W.

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

This post also appears at The American Strategist. This year’s Failed States Index from Foreign Policy magazine is interesting not only for the questions the Index raises about failing states, but also for the questions it poses about the very act of measuring state stability (you can read about FP’s methodology here).

As Leo Hindery points out on New American Contract’s latest US Economy Talking Points, the Financial Times may be missing the point about a recently released report on TARP’s impact on bank lending. The headline of today’s Financial Times cover story “Banks use Tarp funds to boost lending,” could not be more misleading.