Last year, I wrote an article in the Washington Post, “The Rise of Japan’s Thought Police,” suggesting that Japan’s right-wing was harassing important intellectuals, political leaders, business leaders, and other important voices that were engaged in a fair debate about Japan’s relations with China and about the future character of Japan’s imperial institution.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey is speaking at Yale University next Thursday afternoon. If you are nearby, you should go. Woolsey will be speaking for he Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism on Thursday, 29 March, at 4:15 pm in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101, 63 High Street in New Haven.
There is a great website out there, Poem of the Week, that is run anonymously by a good friend of mine. This week’s poem is Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born in 1792 and was “a renowned atheist and proponent of ‘free love’ when such things were decidedly unfashionable.
It was heavy-lifting all the way, but the House funding bill that funds America’s operations in Iraq but requires withdrawal in 2008, passed today in a 218-212 vote.
I will be in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at Dickinson College Saturday evening for the “central Pennsylvania debut” of a new fictional film on Iraq by Director Philip Haas titled The Situation. Ticket information follows here — but just prior to the show at 7 p.m.
Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is about to get former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s endorsement. This is pretty big news and strengthens Clinton’s position in Iowa significantly. Vilsack — while a second tier presidential contender — is nonetheless an important part of a credible heartland strategy.
Chris Matthews and Tom DeLay had a tug back and forth on whether DeLay had called Dick Armey “drunk” or “blind” with ambition. DeLay kept insisting through the show that his new book cites Armey as “blind with ambition” but Matthews pointed out to him that the book reads “drunk with ambition.
(Former Senator Jesse Helms was the partner of Dan Burton on Helms-Burton Law) Perhaps it was too good to be true.
(Israeli Ambassador to Italy and former Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Public Affairs Gideon Meir: AIPAC can help so much it hurts) Even the best informed of us can be just real dumb on Friday mornings. I never knew that AIPAC was NOT compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The details are fuzzy, but news agencies are reporting that the Iranian Navy has just detained 15 British troops in Iraqi waters. After some negotiation and diplomatic sizzle, these troops will no doubt be released. But this is more evidence that America and Iran are poking each other through proxies.
