If the Wall Street Journal has it right, the Grahamanuel deal to swap a Khalid Shaikh Mohammed military commission for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is inching forward in the Senate. Well, sort of. The paper claims that anonymous Democratic Senate aides “say Mr. Graham believes two other Republicans are willing to [...]

Congratulations to Tom Ricks, whose Best Defense blog won the National Magazine Award for blogging. I’ve noticed some people have a problem with Ricks’ award. What’s the point? Everyone can relitigate the winners of every commendation, and I suppose there’s fun in it, but after a certain point it just looks like jealousy. Just congratulate [...]

Well, I’m not presumptuous enough to say, but some of my sources in what you might call the Two State Solution Community have some ideas. In today’s Washington Independent, the TSSC wants Clinton to, naturally, get beyond the current diplomatic rift with Israel, but be up front about the need to stop settlement construction and [...]

You might have heard that retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the marauding Bosnian Serb militiamen who overran got Dutch peacekeepers to abandon the Muslim safe area of Srebrenica succeeded because the Dutch allow homosexual military service. A four star general actually said this to a Senate panel. [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 217-10 March 18, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Gunnery Sgt. Robert L. Gilbert II, 28, of Richfield, Ohio, died March 16 of wounds sustained March 8 while supporting combat operations in Badghis province, Afghanistan. He [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 216-10 March 18, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Richard J. Jordan, 29, of Tyler, Texas, died March 16 in Mosul, Iraq, of injuries sustained during a vehicle roll-over. He was assigned to the [...]

I didn’t actually think Foxman would have the chutzpah to do this, and was mostly taking his remarks to their obvious conclusions in this post. But now he actually did it. Gen. Petraeus has simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. and coalition forces in the region to a solution of the [...]

My friend Matt Duss begins his new Nation piece on the Cheneys thusly: I’m sure not many fathers think about whether their children will defend them one day from accusations that they ordered torture. Purely coincidentally, Duss is the proud father of two lovely girls who, I am confident, will grow up prepared to defend [...]

Let me confess that I have an antipathy for street theatrics when applied to politics. I hate crowds generally, and that tends to cloud my feelings about protest movements. That said: three cheers for Dan Choi. Joe Sudbay reports that he’s just been arrested for dramatizing the injustice of DADT to the gates of the [...]

A collaborative affair. Politico‘s Marin Cogan IM’d me to say Rep. Steve Cohen was commemorating Alex Chilton on the House floor. So I called Cohen’s office for the text of his remarks. Before I received them, though, Alex Pareene tweeted that there was video floating around, thanks to an alert CSPAN producer, and then young [...]