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.

This is sort of a public service announcement. I can’t put the child’s name on the blog — other than that his name is “Alexander” — and won’t put a pic up, but an 8 year old boy got separated from his mother at the Philadelphia AMTRAK train station.

At the end of the day Friday, Bear Stearns’ stock market value was more than $3.5 billion. Over the weekend — today in fact — JP Morgan Chase has announced the acquisition of Bear Stearns at just $236 million.

The Brussels Forum, which I just left this morning to return to Washington, DC, convened a terrific array of policy and political talent from both sides of the Atlantic — and had a distinguished group of attendees from Russia and Japan as well.

This is a note from a good friend — unnamed — in the Senate regarding my earlier post about US Senators on their way to the Brussels Forum getting stuck in Newfoundland: Hey Steve, I just saw your post. I was on that broken-down plane, along with my boss Senator XXXXXXXX.

For the last two days, I have been deeply embedded in German Marshall Fund President Craig Kennedy’s “Brussels Forum“. In years previous, I have been to the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, Economist Intelligence Unit seminars, McKinsey sponsored meetings, and I generally like them all.

One of the very coolest and most informative blogs I check in on a daily basis is ArmsControlWonk.com published by my New America Foundation colleague Jeffrey Lewis. Both of us were asked by the Better World Campaign to offer comments for its “On Day One” initiative. He talked nukes, and I talked Cuba. . .