Some are critiquing Senator Bill Frist’s comments that “people who call themselves Taliban” should be brought into the Afghan government. If Frist actually made these comments, the rationale is exactly the same that many have argued about Hamas and Hezbollah.

I have written previously about the important lesson my briliant, humanistic Japanese politics professor Hans Baerwald taught me: one just can’t really know the norms of a political system, or any system, unless observing that system under stress.

Monday morning, 10:05 am, I’ll be chatting for about half an hour on New York public radio’s “Brian Lehrer Show.” Much to discuss. Gas prices may be plummeting just in time for the elections. I paid $1.

I drive a GMC Sonoma truck and sometimes get a kick valet parking it at high-end receptions and dinners in DC — but the bottom line is that I love my truck. . .or did until GMC just made an outrageous deal with Fox’s Sean Hannity.

I’m at a conference at the College of William & Mary but am also having a serious dental problem with a tooth fractured ten years ago — and need to deal with that. The thread is open.

(Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter) More than 400 academics, policy practitioners and journalists over two and a half years have contributed to a large-scale project, the Princeton Project on National Security. The project was co-chaired by former Secretary of State George Shultz and former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake.

The last pre-election loophole through which John Bolton’s confirmation might have snuck through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was at 2:15 this afternoon at a previously called “business meeting” of the Committee.

This has been a tough week. A prominent conservative pol knocked me around a bit in some private communications and caused some real stress because of the view by his staff memer that I am a “firebrand” — a really good one in his view.

AP reports today that John McCain is calling for “quick confirmation” of John Bolton. Senator McCain seems to be doing something that I regretfully admit that I have done on some occasions.

(photo from Crooks and Liars) After the Clinton Global Initiative had ended and in the hours that followed, I was doing some writing and organizing of notes in the CGI press room where Fox News’ Chris Wallace was also hanging around — looking pensive, waiting for what I didn’t know then was an attempted mugging…