Last night, President Obama said in his remarks to a joint meeting of Congress: To seek progress toward a secure and lasting peace between Israel and her neighbours, we have appointed an envoy to sustain our effort. I dislike the word “sustain” here.

I have just some very quick reactions to the Obama speech tonight as I’ve been on Al Jazeera English Network tonight talking for more than three hours on it and don’t want to really repeat the general patter of many other commentators and bloggers.

This is a guest post for The Washington Note by UC Berkeley cognitive linguistics professor George Lakoff, author of The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain and Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate–The Essential Guide for Progressives.

Tonight, State Department Acting Spokesman Robert Wood issued a statement that Dennis Ross was now officially “Special Advisor for The Gulf and Southwest Asia.

Jackie Northam, national security correspondent for NPR, has a great piece up on Senator Richard Lugar’s moves on US-Cuba relations that will air this evening. But here is the beginning of the “text” that can be read in full as well. But the opener: The senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says U.S….

Douglas Rediker is Director of the New America Foundation/Global Strategic Finance Initiative. Rediker is a capital markets expert who has been focused on the emergence of “state capitalism” as a key feature of the new international economic order. He has now become a regular contributor to The Washington Note.

This evening at about 5:30 pm EST, I will be discussing Senator Richard Lugar‘s important new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report titled “Changing Cuba Relations: In the United States National Interest” (pdf here) with Jackie Northam on All Things Considered. From Lugar’s opening letter with the new US-Cuba “committee print”: “The debate [over U.S.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Richard Lugar, a long time realist and serious strategic thinker about America’s national security challenges, has just popped the bubble of those who have used Cuba for decades in their ineffective ideological crusades.

Win Monroe is a research intern at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program. Yesterday, Krygystan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed a bill ordering the closure of the US air base in Manas.

Off to Pittsburgh. Any TWN readers who might be at the great “Cole Porter” party this evening, let me know. . .