Note to Obama Spokesman Bill Burton and Campaign Director David Axelrod: This is probably not a good thing to repeat. Reflects hubris.

I’m up in Ottawa today speaking for the Canadian government’s “Deputy Ministers’ Retreat” along with former Ambassador and Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, Brookings governance policy czar Thomas Mann, and AEI’s trade guru Claude Barfield.

Patrick Doherty is the Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program at The New America Foundation, and the Director of our US-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. The New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow will release the results of a Pakistani, pre-election public opinion poll today at New America at 12:15.

I read this today and boy, it seemed familiar. . . and then I remembered I posted this yesterday on Douglas Feith, Lawrence Wilkerson and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. I’m sure it’s just coincidence. . .

Friday (tomorrow), I will be speaking at the Deputy Ministers’ Retreat in Ottawa, Canada. It’s all off the record though. Then back to DC. From June 29 – July 2, I will be in Beijing. July 3 – July 4, in Guilin, China. July 5-6, Xian. July 7- 9, Shanghai July 10-13, Hong Kong.

I’ll be moderating a session with Senator Russ Feingold on Monday, 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm EST on America’s “National Security Intelligence Deficit.” You can watch live streaming of the event here at The Washington Note. For more on the substance of the event, read Andrew Lebovich.

In light of the September 11 attacks, the incorrect reports of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the current debate over Iran’s nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community has received an incredible amount of scrutiny in recent years.

I agree with Barack Obama’s rejection of public financing in his presidential race because he is right that the ecosystem of campaign finance remains warped and that one side running tied by the rules of public finance and the other side essentially not would produce a disputed, potentially unfair outcome.

Yesterday, former Defense Department Under Secretary Douglas Feith failed to show up at a Congressional hearing investigating abusive interrogation techniques used on combat detainees because he did not want to appear along side former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson.

(Pictured Above: Dr. Susan Rice with Barack Obama) On a conference call this morning, Dr. Susan Rice, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), and Greg Craig (whose client’s have included Russian dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Elian Gonzalez’s father, Mr. Juan Miguel) defended Barack Obama against recent criticisms from Sen.