The Obama Administration yesterday began circulating a draft executive order that would close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But doing that could prove difficult as explained here by Columbia University law prof Matthew Waxman. [This has been crossposted at my personal blog.]

Education Week, the publication of a not-for-profit organization that seeks excellence in education, says Ohio has the seventh-best public education program among all the states. Ohio was given a B- overall. For a severely cash-strapped state whose public school funding program has been ruled unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court on four different occasions, this is, quite frankly, amazing news. Governor Ted Strickland, who was elected in 2006, has said that if he doesn’t get the school...

…now apparently more divided by a common language. The resistance reminds me a bit of wariness of attempts at metrifying the US.

Let me be clear about something at the outset: Based on the transcripts of some wiretapped conversations released by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, I have a decidedly negative impression of Illinois’ Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich. His profanity-laced declarations that he intended to sell his state’s US Senate seat reminded me of a pathetic playground pretender who hopes his tough talk will earn him the respect of bigger kids. Blagojevich clearly has some juvenile notions...

In 1980, Edward M. Kennedy ran to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from incumbent Jimmy Carter. Early enthusiasm for Kennedy’s candidacy gave way to mystification and finally, indifference. Why? Well, for one thing, in an interview with that era’s version of Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue, the Massachusetts senator couldn’t say why he was running for president. In the end, his flimsy rationale appeared to be, “I’m a Kennedy. It’s time for me to fulfill...

Robert Graham, whose unique design for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., manages, in turn, to be moving, evocative, informative, and fun, has died. I didn’t know what to expect when my family and I first went to the FDR Memorial a few years back, but was pleasantly surprised. It’s the sort of place to which a civic-minded parent could take a civics-resistant kid (something my kids never were) and know that, in spite of the child’s willful resolves, she or he...

So says Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu of the failure of his country, South Africa, to push for Robert Mugabe to step down from power in Zimbabwe. Read about his comments here. South Africa’s government can, if it chooses, play a key role in catalyzing a peaceful transition of power in the wake of last year’s sham election in Zimbabwe. [This has been cross-posted at my personal blog.]

This morning, I felt the need to clarify what I like about Rick Warren, something I briefly hinted at here and on my own site. After cataloging what I like about Warren, I presented this summary, now here for your consideration: Those who portray Warren as a demon for his positions on homosexuality or a sellout for praying for the new president in January aren’t paying attention to the whole person. His positions–theological and political–aren’t driven by hatred. Nor, in being...

“I find the professional screamers and their checklists of what constitutes a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ predictable to the point of boredom.”-Bob Schieffer in the preface to his book, Bob Schieffer’s America [Crossposted at my personal blog.]

“No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state for which he shall be chosen.” (Article 1, Section 3, The United States Constitution) There, folks, is the Constitution’s sparsely-worded set of requirements for anyone wishing to serve as a United States Senator. It seems like a good idea to review those words in light of the current...

Rick Warren will give the Invocation at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. VanderKloot, the inspiring, humble, intelligent pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois, whose daily emailed inspirations I often share with readers of my blog, gave the invocation at the big rally with Obama and his then-newly announced running mate, Joe Biden, held at the old Illinois State House on the Saturday before the Democratic National Convention. I had hoped that Mr. Obama would ask...

as noted here and here on November 26.

A little background on those shoes hurled at President Bush at an Iraqi press conference seems in order. In traditional Mideast culture, the foot is considered the filthiest part of the human body. This is reflected in a book in which I spend quite a lot of time, the Bible, and it plays an important role in an annual event on the Christian calendar. Maundy Thursday–maundy being an Old English word meaning commandment, used for the Thursday before Easter because it was then that Jesus gave a...

Or are they one and the same? I mean him and him. We’ll know for sure if, in a surprising twist, Samwise Gamgee is appointed to Barack Obama’s vacant US Senate seat. [This bit of blog trivia was crossposted at my otherwise depthy personal blog.]

Talk about whoppers! This one would make Rod Blagojevich blush. A day after Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe claimed that the cholera outbreak in his country had been thwarted, in spite of confirmation from numerous sources it was claiming more victims, a member of the Mugabe regime claimed that cholera had been planted by Britain: Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the outbreak as a “genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British.” In the meantime, the same...

How does a lying thug like Robert Mugabe stay in power? Clearly, he’s supported by other lying thugs. In fact, press reports from earlier this year indicated that in the wake of the 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, Mugabe was preparing to concede his loss and step down from office. But his military sponsors told him that he would, under no circumstances, concede. So, the lying thug who has oppressed and murdered thousands of Zimbabweans while he and his henchmen robbed his countrymen...

The Supreme Court will not hear the complaints of those claiming that President-elect Barack Obama isn’t a “natural born” US citizen, as the Constitution requires our president to be. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after the state was admitted into the Union. Marc Ambinder wrote about this several days ago. The entire “case” against Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen” was without merit. It’s good that a conservative Supreme...

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has spoken with New York’s governor regarding the Senate seat which may be open soon, should Hillary Clinton’s nomination for Secretary of State go through.* Her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has confirmed that she is interested in the post. Kennedy may be qualified for the US Senate. For one thing, unlike Clinton, she’s actually lived in New York. In fact, she’s played an important role in raising money for the public schools in New York City. But...

I was in a Virgin Records Store earlier this week. (It’s a place where I sometimes peruse, although I can’t remember ever buying anything there, by the way.) As I looked around, this CD caught my eye: Imitation is, of course, if not the highest, one of the highest forms of flattery and obviously, this LP cover art from Def Leppard, a band I have managed to totally avoid through the years, pays homage to the Beatles. The Sparkle Lounge, I’ve since learned, was released in April...

I don’t ask this impudently. My favorite conference, the Big 10, has its problems. I’m willing, in fact, to admit that the Big 10 is down this year. But really, how do fans Big 12 teams expect their favorites to do in the post-season BCS bowl games? This weekend’s five matchups in the Big 12 saw a total of 371 points scored, 102 of those in what was supposedly the elite game of the day, Oklahoma at Oklahoma State. What do you make of a conference where the average total points per...

The war in Europe was over and the Allied commander, General Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower, was extremely ill, at home on leave. Doctors had ordered him to rest. But, in the face of an enormous humanitarian crisis that threatened millions in Europe with starvation, the leader of Europe’s liberation from Nazi Germany, testified about the need of relief from a war-weary United States. Read the story here. The account, written by William Lambers, ends this way: We didn’t forget about Europe...

There must be some years when being part of the editorial crowd charged with selecting the “person of the year” at TIME magazine live in happy confusion: a lack of clarity created by a swirl of candidates for being named the person (or planet, or group of people, or machine) which “for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year.” In some years, TIME’s editors have used the choice to highlight trends that weren’t led or catalyzed...

[UPDATE: Please note that I neither endorse nor condemn the Citi bailout here, only comment on the opportunities presented by the financial crisis we now face.] My grandfather, a small business entrepreneur, used to say, “Borrow a thousand dollars from the bank and the bank owns you; borrow a hundred thousand from the bank and you own the bank.” The times were simpler then. But if you add a few zeroes, as represented in the sometimes shaky yet astronomical loans made by major US lending...

Ann Althouse headlined a link to a news story this way: “Surgeons thought Rosemary Alvarez had a brain tumour, but on operating they found the worm.” Somehow, that made me think of this scene from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’: Come to think of it, the Althouse headline, taken from the body of a BBC report, also looks like the lead-in for a Monty Python sketch. [This has been crossposted on my personal blog.]

Howard LaFranchi has some informed speculations. Those with whom LaFranchi spoke speculate that, owing to our own financial crisis, the one precipitated by falling oil prices in Iran, and the upcoming Iranian presidential election in which incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, by no means, a shoo-in, Obama will take deliberate approach to confronting and eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The new president is, according to LaFranchi’s reporting, likely to seek new sanctions against...