This exchange between Rep. Ray Lahood and Bob Schieffer is just lovely (posted at Crooks and Liars): Lahood: Look at, I give Speaker Hastert high marks for strong leadership. He took care of Tom DeLay, his best friend. When Tom was having ethical problems, the speaker went to him and asked him to leave.

I don’t know Gideon Levy, but his piece today in Haaretz reads like highly effective paint remover, sheering the shabby veneer of the Bush administration’s absence of strategy in the Middle East.

See no Evil. Hear no Evil. . .

North Korea has been wanting attention. Now, it seems like it will get some. The President will speak to the nation about North Korea’s nuclear test at 9:45 a.m. this morning.

Stephen Handelman has an insightful article on Ban Ki Moon this morning in the Globe and Mail — and not because he quotes some of my blog commentary on Ban. Handelman writes: “I may look soft from the outside,” he has said. “But I have inner strength when it’s really necessary.

Well, the North Koreans have had their test. John Bolton has a lot of new fuel for his bluster at the UN, but I hope one of these days, folks take a step back and ask how this happened.

So much for those “Mission Accomplished” and “Victory” speeches. Things are tilting very bad directions in Afghanistan.

The North Korea problem needs management. . .now. While this may sound like a modest incident, it’s very scary. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, escalation, and violence in an already tense situation given North Korea’s seeming determination to hold a nuclear test are possible triggers for a regional conflagration in Northeast Asia.

Yesterday, I hosted a meeting with European Parliament Member Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (and Deputy Chairman of the Free Democracts in the European Parliament) who gave a talk titled: “Europe’s Evolving Stakes in the Middle East.” The meeting was assembled by the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

Vice President Cheney’s disregard for America’s system of checks and balances and his huff-and-puff advocacy of unilateral military responses to complex national security challenges has really harmed America’s portfolio of interests. He should be challenged every time and every where he speaks.