Why is tomorrow my favorite wonky day of the month? Because the National Security Strategy finally gets released. For years, I’ve attempted to understand and interpret the grand strategy emerging from the Obama administration, and this is the long-awaited emergence of a foundational text. In advance of its release, I thought it would be appropriate [...]

I know, right? How often does that happen? Well, believe it or not, Rep. Rush Holt, who’s been pushing the Pentagon to order the videotaping of military interrogations for at least the two years that I’ve been covering Holt’s effort, won. It looks like interrogation out in the battlefield won’t be covered, and the whole question [...]

If you’re going through some adversity at the moment, remember that determination, focus and a realistic assessment of your situation will see you through it. Perhaps more suited to this particular example: it may be the case that lames who aren’t on your level have the upper hand at the moment. But nothing is over. [...]

For an eye-opening post about the role of nuclear weapons in India’s grand strategy, read Michael Krepon’s Arms Control Wonk offering. As you’ll see, it’s less about India than it is about the calculations that lead a country whose policymaking elites championed global nuclear disarmament for decades to get a bomb and operate outside of [...]

I’m hesitant to say anything about the Thomas Drake prosecution because Siobhan Gorman is a friend and a respected colleague. Luckily, Glenn Greenwald and John Cole say what needs to be said. Glenn: [H]ere you have the Obama DOJ in all its glory:  no prosecutions (but rather full-scale immunity extended) for war crimes, torture, and illegal [...]

Two years ago I wrote a long reported thinkpiece for the American Prospect about an animating-if-nascent vision of America’s role in the world coming from the Obama campaign. I was proud of it. But it’s the sort of piece that either stands up or doesn’t, and so, nearly a year and a half into the [...]

Unless your name is Anwar al-Awlaki. And if it can be done to al-Awlaki, it can be done to others. I want to just highlight the last paragraph of my Washington Independent post: The administration may very well be making the correct evaluation of the threat al-Awlaki poses. But if citizenship means anything, it means [...]

This is the first time I felt like I see eye-to-eye with people making Mideast policy for the Obama administration. According to the Washington Post, Obama and Netanyahu have nearly come to terms on a series of confidence-building measures to get back to direct talks with the Palestinians. We don’t know their terms (or at [...]

New Gaslight Anthem track. Good to stream, especially if you watched the bill signing. Although the “When it was over/ I woke up alone” line might better apply to this.

I can offer you nothing about health care. What I can offer you is a pained meditation on my disappointment with Siege, a Marvel crossover event that’s easy to love and frustratingly difficult to like. The third issue of the series shipped Wednesday, as did the fifteenth issue of one of its affiliated stories, Dark [...]