A source has told me that Senator Chuck Hagel had a recent meeting with Russian Federation Ambassador to the U.S.

My colleagues at the New America Foundation’s HigherEdWatch — the same people who broke a whopper of a story in April on student loan officers receiving kickbacks from banks, which generated a national media firestorm, Congressional inquiries and legal settlements with many state attorney generals — have broken some more news on predatory student lending….

This article by Bob Barr today was a breath of fresh air in the debates about Iran. I don’t agree with all of it — but clearly this former Member of Congress grasps the reality of the situation.

I’ve had something of a one-track mind these past few months, as regular readers of this blog might have noticed. The Law of the Sea has been the subject of at least half of my recent posts and an even greater percentage of my advocacy focus.

It’s tough being a Republican multilateralist, but in my view, World Bank President Robert Zoellick is pulling it off. Bob Davis at the Wall Street Journal seems to agree. Today, is Zoellick’s 100th day since succeeding his embattled predecessor and now AEI Visiting Scholar Paul Wolfowitz.

(Senator Gary Hart and Steve Clemons at Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley‘s official residence in Annapolis) During October and November, Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience will host five former and current U.S. Senators in a series called “A Bipartisan Conversation on Politics and History.

Later today (Wednesday), an interesting letter that I will post at 2 pm will be sent to President Bush outlining key requirements necessary to secure any real success in the November Israel-Palestine Peace Summit that President Bush and Condoleezza Rice will orchestrate in Annapolis.

While former Ambassador John Bolton aided and abetted neo-con inspired foreign policy efforts while serving in the administration, as Steve Clemons has pointed out in the past Bolton is mistakenly lumped into the tribe of neo-conservatives.

I was with Bill Kristol and much of the rest of the world on the legitimacy and crucial need to invade Afghanistan and to crush al Qaeda.

James Fallows crossed swords with Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt earlier this week in a short essay charghing Hiatt and his co-editors with recklessness in their reporting both about China recently and about Iraq before the invasion.