David Wurmser, one of the Vice President’s most dedicated neoconservative spear-carriers, is leaving the administration to start a risk assessment consulting firm.

When I first tuned into the Democratic debate tonight, I started taking copious notes on who was saying what. Then I stopped. Most Americans will be going more on general impressions than word-by-word analysis, so I should too. On policy, the most important takeaway, for me, anyway, is Gov.

When I worked in Russia in 2003 for the Moscow Helsinki Group the government has already begun limiting press freedoms and buying up independent media outlets, but civil society was becoming broader, more representative, and more active.

The Senate won’t move on the Law of the Sea until after the August recess. Holding hearings on the Convention this month, ensuring that it won’t compete with appropriations bills for floor time in the fall, would’ve been the right move.

The news is out that Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Washington Post Managing Editor Steve Coll will be my next boss succeeding Ted Halstead at the New America Foundation.

I just wanted to acknowledge what CNN is now reporting, that Dick Cheney will hold the power of the Presidency while Bush undergoes a colonoscopy. This will likely just end up as a blip on the radar screen.

My colleague Raj Purohit writes on the Citizens for Global Solutions blog: A few years ago I was talking to a former high level official from the Clinton Administration about Pol Pot. Specifically we were discussing why he was never brought to trial for his crimes in the weeks before he committed suicide.

The bleat of many Scooter Libby supporters in the Valerie Plame CIA-outing scandal is that there was “no underlying crime.” They tried to sidestep the obstruction crime that Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff was found guilty of.

Senator Reid’s clever theatrics of keeping the Senate open all night to do battle with Republicans over Iraq policy is another winner in my book. It was nearly as good a legislative tactic as his Frist-frazzling Rule 21 move. Many argue that this was a stunt. It wasn’t.

When in Europe, I was frequently queried about the current state of play in the Republican and Democratic presidential primary process.