Senator Chris Dodd may have just pulled a Hillary Clinton. . .

It appears increasingly likely that the Kurdish cause will be the latest American casualty in Iraq. Kurdistan, an autonomous region in Iraq’s northeast, is governed by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). Whether Kurdistan remains viable as an autonomous region depends on whether it can incorporate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as its capital.

My blogger friend Gavin Sheridan has hit some good milestones — and wanted to give a good shout out. He has a great blog and launched another a while back that is up for best blogs in Ireland. Good show Gavin.

The New America Foundation is organizing a major forum in March, and yours truly is deeply involved.

3:30 pm EST today, I am hosting journalist and author Ron Suskind who will discuss his book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. It will stream live in the box above.

Before reading this bit about a sobering set of messages offered at a very nice Financial Times reception, the must read assignment first is Martin Wolf’s “Japan’s Lessons for a World of Balance-Sheet Recession.” Now you can proceed. . .

Tomorrow night at about 9:30 pm EST, Rachel Maddow will air an interview on her MSNBC show that she has done with former Guantanamo guard Army Pvt. Brandon Neely about his experiences with prisoners at the Cuba-based detention facility. From an unfortunately not too shocking Associated Press report: Army Pvt.

I just ran across some of my notes from a conference organized by the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Hakone, Japan from March 12-13, 1999. I was about to toss these scribbles until I glanced through them and found so many gems they should probably go to the National Diet archives.

Embedded video from CNN Video I encourage you to watch this 15 minute analysis of the Israeli elections from Fareed Zakaria’s GPS.

I like a lot of movies, but my bar for “like” is probably pretty low.