I occasionally write for the CNN.com website and just noticed that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry is now doing so too. In a great piece applauding President Obama’s early executive orders to move forward vigorously the closing of Guantanamo, Kerry outlines what the failure to respect human rights means for national security.

I just received a press note from the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute encouraging me to watch and listen to the comparison above of Barack Obama’s rhetoric and that of Franklin Roosevelt. I did.

Blurring edges is not necessarily an exclusively neoconservative trait, but Scott Horton reports it is something that began to really irk New York Times editors about seemingly hurried columns that Bill Kristol rushed to them.

Neoconservativism existed before Bill Kristol, but before him none had figured out how to market the brand and go viral. Some may argue that Kristol’s neoconservative policy work never actually did go viral, but they’d be wrong.

A bit more than a week ago, I had a fascinating discussion with outgoing US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad who also previously served as US Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan. It runs about 90 minutes long – and I think is well worth listening to in total.

I will be chatting with Rachel Maddow today on her Air America Radio show on the subject of Barack Obama’s foreign policy team. (airs at 6 pm EST) Obama’s visit to Foggy Bottom yesterday was so surprising, so different than President Bush, that it really caught me by surprise.

This is a guest post for The Washington Note written by Hillary Mann Leverett, a former State Department and National Security Council official who participated in numerous rounds of secret negotiations with Iran.

At noon today EST, New York Governor Dennis Paterson will announce that Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand will succeed Hillary Clinton’s recently vacated U.S. Senate seat. But until forty-eight hours ago, most still had their money on Caroline Kennedy, daughter of America’s most iconic modern president, getting the nod.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with European Commission officials in Brussels last week to discuss his country’s accession negotiations. The Prime Minister reaffirmed his commitment to the process, and appointed Egemen Bagis, a close personal adviser, to be his chief negotiator with Brussels.

Embedded video from CNN Video This video above is pretty amazing. CNN’s John King shows how pictures that regular folks took at the Inauguration can be synthesized into a photographic wall much larger than any single person had themselves. This is called CNN’s “Photosynth.