Last August, I ran into Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who remarked to me after reading both something on The Washington Note and after Ari Berman’s excellent article, “The Strategic Class,” that “realism had become the new liberal ideology.

I don’t have much time to write about this now, but TWN — which was keenly focused on blocking John Bolton‘s confirmation as Ambassador to the United Nations — will be launching a “Bolton Watch” division of The Washington Note in early 2006.

I am in Los Angeles this morning and was drawn to two op-eds that ran in today’s Los Angeles Times, one by Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations and the other by journalist Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of Britain’s The Independent.

The Washington Note was the first to get out the news that Douglas Holtz-Eakin was leaving his post to accept a position at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Anne Gearan’s interesting piece on Condi Rice yesterday got me thinking about what structurally is enhancing or constraining the Secretary of State’s success.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays! Oakley and I wish you a fantastic holiday weekend. I’m working with my new Apple Powerbook and appreciate all of the advice from knowledgable Mac practitioners. While Oakley has the blue ball, it seems that my powerbook does have the blue tooth — so many things are possible.

Greetings and happy Friday TWN readers. I just bought a new Apple Powerbook G4 to move me into 2006, and this is a real departure from the Dell Inspiron I had which had two hard disks and four keyboards go out on me in 20 months.

Besides holiday gift shopping, which I still do too much of on foot rather than on-line, I have been digging into as much detail as possible on the so-called “Bush Bombing Memo” that recounts George Bush’s conversation with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera‘s headquarters.

I have to admit that I have not spent a lot of time thinking about the succession scenarios in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, currently headed by John Negroponte.

(photo credit: The Australian) Many analysts of President Bush’s speech on Iraq last night noted that he has stopped insisting that things could hardly be better in Iraq and that victory was around the corner. He acknowledged high costs of America’s Iraq effort and slightly flirted with realism.