I’ve received a mountain of email lately — some of it has asked for some more pics of Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner and his kid-sister Annie. Well, here’s one above of the pups sleeping which they do a lot of after some wild romps, runs, and walks that they get into on a daily basis….

As many readers of this blog know, I hosted former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson’s October 2005 cannon blast against the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” and the degradation of the national security decision making process in the White House.

I’m halfway through a report on disaster management and peacebuilding by Michael Renner and my good friend Zoe Chafe at the Worldwatch Institute. The frequency of disasters is likely to increase due to a number of factors, chiefly among them climate change.

I have no doubt that readers of this blog have noticed my more-than-occasional rants about insufficient U.S. funding for multilateral activities and institutions. Global poverty and U.N. peacekeeping are among the areas I’ve pushed for hardest through my ” day job,” but there’s another that’s just as much in need and even less noticed.

A TWN reader just sent me this interesting article titled “Arab Journalist Knocks U.S. Credibility in the Mideast,” that ran in yesterday’s Daily Oregonian. The title of the article aside, it’s a very interesting inventory of views of America’s Middle East mess as seen from an Arab perspective.

(John Edwards’ Senior Economic Adviser Leo Hindery and CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman at New America Foundation Dinner) This is interesting news. John Edwards has appointed cables sports industry giant Leo Hindery to serve as Senior Economic Advisor on his campaign.

I’m back from an interesting and informative conference put on by the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation. I shared some reflections earlier and have a few more to throw out. Senator Gordon Smith delivered a keynote this morning.

I’m taking a minute during lunch at America in the World to share a question I had during today’s insightful panel on the Middle East. The panel consisted of Helene Cooper (moderator), Daniel Kurtzer, Ellen Laipson, and Daniel Levy.

I’m at the Hyatt Regency this morning at a conference jointly sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation. The topic? “America in the World.” Madeleine Albright kicked things off this morning. A couple of takeaways: – Secretary Albright has long proposed that the U.S. is the “indispensable nation.

(Ahlam Ahmed Mahmoud al Al-Jabouri; photo credit: Marc Perelman) The Forward correspondent Marc Perelman has a moving and important profile in Salon of Ahlam Ahmed Mahmoud al Al-Jabouri who is now an Iraqi refugee in Syria.