The Gulf States with Saudi Arabia in the lead are scrambling to figure out what to do if American power in the Middle East continues to dissipate. One of the tools in their tool kit is to quietly over-supply crude oil into the global market and knock prices down.

A friend sent me this interesting Los Angeles Times article on Barack Obama’s ability to bridge right and left when he ascended to the editorship of the Harvard Law Review. But then I went to Obama’s pre-campaign site and then looked at Hillary’s pre-campaign site. These are technically “exploratory committee” websites.

(Bushehr Nuclear Reactor facility) Over the last two years, Iran has played a shrewd diplomatic hand. It has negotiated with the Europeans and continued to do business deals with China and Russia.

I haven’t posted a follow up piece on the broader parts of the President’s State of the Union Address — beyond this foreign policy essay — and I haven’t posted on Senator Chuck Hagel’s impressive and courageous leadership on the Iraq War Resolution this week, as well as Senator Biden’s leadership — because I have…

President Bush 41 has given a number of speeches this past year — one recently at the Germany Embassy — but in lots of other places where he goes out of his way to praise the team of people he had around him, particularly Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and a few others.

This was a nice surprise yesterday. The Washington Note received a terrific write-up in the new Hill newspaper, Politico that has hired so many high-powered DC political writers away from the Washington Post and other publications — including John Harris and Jim VandeHei.

Keith Ellison (D-MN-5) is the first Muslim Member of the U.S. House of Representatives — and last night, I was impressed with some commentary he offered on the Al Jazeera English Satellite Channel.

The National Interest Online asked for a quick response from me about the foreign policy dimensions of President Bush’s State of the Union address last night. Here is a short article, “Bush’s Kitchen Sink Address” that was published this morning.

Just in from the White House media team: The 2007 State of the Union Policy Initiatives book including all of the State of the Union fact sheets is now available here in pdf form.

Early tomorrow morning, National Interest Online will feature an interesting line-up of fast action respondents to the foreign policy dimensions of the President’s speech tonight. The line-up thus far is: Ali Allawi, former Iraqi Minister of Defense Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee General William Odom, former Director, National Security Agency Nikolas K….