Avaaz is essentially the global version of MoveOn.org — and in the short year or so that its organizers and constituents have been kicking up the spotlight on international problems, they have accomplished much. I’m particularly supportive of Avaaz’s efforts on a Gaza ceasefire.

Doug Bandow has a hard-hitting critique of John McCain over at AntiWar.com. McCain opponents will find it one of the best compilations of tightly wound reasons to agitate against John McCain getting the keys to the White House and the codes to the “football.

(Richard Vague and blogger/historian Juan Cole) This is a guest post by Richard Vague, a moderate Republican who served as co-Founder and CEO of First USA Bank. Vague is the author of Terrorism: A Brief for Americans.

A 20-year old gay Iranian, Mehdi Kazemi, who had been studying in the UK suffered the loss of a boyfriend who was hanged in Iran for his homosexuality. He asked for asylum in the UK and was denied. He then fled to the Netherlands, and Dutch courts also rejected his plea.

I recently enjoyed a BloggingHeads discussion, or what Non Zero author and BloggingHeads creator Robert Wright calls a “diavlog”, with Juan Cole. This morning’s New York Times oped page picked up a five minute clip of my discussion with Juan Cole.

I just saw No Country for Old Men. Perhaps Hillary and Obama should flip a coin? She now leads him in a new Gallup poll — and McCain polls at the moment beating either Clinton or Obama, though the lead McCain has over Clinton is statistically insignificant.

There won’t be a squeaky clean ending to the Democratic battle for the 2008 presidential nomination. The knife fight has begun already — and I only hope that maturity in the end prevails so that the side that edges out victory has the magnanimity to deal well with the almost-winners from the other side.

(Daniel Yergin, Richard Vague, and Senator Chuck Hagel at New America Foundation salon dinner, 20 February 2007) Richard Vague, a businessman who became distressed by the course the U.S.

This quote from Barack Obama’s speech today caught my attention: Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough.

I have written before about the difficult decision Colin Powell and his team, including State Department Chief of Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, made when they decided to stay in the first George W.