Newsweek published an highly interesting article today. Retired Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, head of the National Counterterrorism Center explains that the US is going to get hit again by terrorists in the (near) future (no matter what the US does) and he explains what the nature of the war against terrorism is. He also talks about Osama Bin Laden. It is remarkable to hearread him say with such a high confidence level that Osama Bin Laden is (99% sure basically) still alive. He explains that if...

Today, Turkish Daily News published an OP-ED written by yours truly. In the column I argue that it is time for the CHP (as you all should know by now: Turkey’s main opposition party) to change its course. If it does not, I write, it will become increasingly irrelevant. A couple of the points I make: Although as an outsider I certainly understand why many secularists are worried about the reforms Gül and Erdogan might try to introduce once in shared power, the CHP and its supporters also...

A fascinating article was published recently at the Wall Street Journal about affirmative action. As far as I am concerned, this article is an absolute must read for all those interested in this issue. The author, Gail Hariot (professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights), starts by writing: Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools...

Real Clear Politics will occasionally feature a blogpost on their frontpage linking to the article republished at Real Clear Politics / blog page, or so I was told. They will only do this every once in a while, but it is a great initiative – in my opinion. Although this is of course good news, there is even better news: for today they selected my Progressives Unite! post. Hopefully, other major websites will follow RCP’s lead and feature bloggers every now and then.

Earlier today, I received an e-mail from someone who works for The Issue telling me that they linked to my article about the resignation of Alberto Gonzales on their frontpage. I checked out the website of The Issue and found it to be highly interesting: it is a newspaper that basically keeps an eye on the blogs. They call it: “The Blog Newspaper.” The goal of The Isssue is to introduce “more people to the blogosphere by linking to top content each day.” If they keep on doing...

Halleluya! Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. It now seems to me that he did not want to resign at a moment that it could be seen as ‘surrendering to the Democrats.’ Instead of resigning once it became clear that he has been a more than horrible Attorney General (to put it mildly), Gonzales seems to have decided to wait a couple of months and then to submit and announce his resignation. Gonzales...

Neo-neocon writes at Pajamas Media: Some Democrats in Congress were for the Iraq war before they were against it. But that was before some of them were for it again—at least, sort of. If that sounds confusing, just think how confusing it must be for them. A number of those Democrats who originally voted to invade Iraq but then opposed the surge back in January—and even a few who had opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start—have been doing some fairly energetic scrambling lately...

Roger L. Simon writes at Pajamas Media that he will not blog about the Olympic Games in Beijing (summer of 2008). The reason, of course, is that China’s government is not exactly one of the most tolerant open governments in the world. The Communist Party oppresses its people, torture is still practiced, freedom of speech does is virtually non-existent, etc. Roger rightfully criticized American companies like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft in the past, for working with the Chinese government...

This article at Newsweek does not exactly make one feel good: The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004-05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden’s redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader’s 40-odd bodyguards...

Thomas Friedman wrote a heck of a column for the New York Times. His basic point is that George W. Bush – and thus America – are losing the propaganda war, at least in the Middle East. “One thing that has always baffled me,” Friedman writes, “about the Bush team’s war effort in Iraq and against Al Qaeda is this: How could an administration that was so good at Swift-boating its political opponents at home be so inept at Swift-boating its geopolitical opponents...

There is something strange going on in the progressive blogosphere these days: instead of uniting against Republicans, progressive bloggers like Matt Stoller have decided to declare war on every Democrat who they consider not to be progressive (read anti-war) enough. Seemingly frustrated that there are actually Democratic Congressmen that do not necessarily always vote along party lines – but make up their own minds – they have decided to ask their readers to make profiles of so-called...

Please note that Pete Abel edited the letter to Republican leaders. He changed the seventh paragraph and published the names of the ones who signed the letter thusfar. At this moment, 14 individuals signed the letter and Pete is waiting to hear more from moderate Republican organizations who agreed to circulate the letter among their members. If you have not signed the letter yet, do so now (this goes for Independents and Republicans). It sends, I think, a healthy message to the Republican leadership:...

One gets the impression more and more that Republicans – and thus the White House – want to replace al-Maliki. Instead of just criticizing al-Maliki, a lobbying firm owned by Republicans is now calling for al-Maliki’s resignation and wants him to be replaced by Iyad Allawi. Meanwhile, Bobby Ghosh explains at TIME that there are few good alternatives after Nouri al-Maliki. About Allawi Ghosh writes: “During his brief tenure, he showed little capacity for administration and...

If you want to read the key finding of the NIE report and Nancy Pelosi’s reaction, I suggest going here.

Joe Gandelman selected a part of this column by Paul Krugman for his Quote of the Day. The quote: Quite simply, America is becoming less white, mainly because of immigration. Hispanic and Asian voters were only 4 percent of the electorate in 1980, but they were 11 percent of voters in 2004 — and that number will keep rising for the foreseeable future. Those numbers are the reason Karl Rove was so eager to reach out to Hispanic voters. But the whites the G.O.P. has counted on to vote their...

Classy: Don’t fool yourselves the Taliban are not barbarians like the US & it’s coalition forces NAY, these Korean Crusaders were tried and sentenced just as the spy Daniel Pearl was. No apology from this Muslim, rather a BIG smile and lots of Duaa (supplications) for my Taliban brothers in Islam. The crime? Trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. The punishment, according to Yousef al-Khattab? Death by beheading. O, he ended his message as follows: P.S. I neither support nor...

I cannot say much about this news, except for that the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, seems to be a bit confused… to say the least. Where he first refused to call the killings of Armenians during World War I ‘genocide,’ he now has changed his mind due to public pressure: In a dramatic reversal, the Anti-Defamation League�s national director has issued a statement describing the massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as “tantamount...

Will America ever get serious about securing the borders of the United States? Donald Douglas says no: The more I read about the down and dirty details of enforcing our immigration laws, the less confident I am that the country will ever get serious about securing our borders and respecting the rule of law. It seems that, ‘when Giuliani was mayor of New York, the city adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the issue of cooperating with federal authorities investigating...

This was to be expected: Iraq’s prime minister lashed out Wednesday at U.S. criticism, saying no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his country “can find friends elsewhere.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the U.S. presidential campaign for the recent tough words about his government — from President Bush and from other U.S. politicians. Maliki: “No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected...

Ed Morrissey’s Captain’s Quarters is not just the best conservative blog on the net, it also has a new design. Be sure to go to Captain’s Quarters: it looks great. The design does not just look awesome, though, it also has some great new options / features. Notice how they have integrated Blog Talk Radio into it. Lastly, it also loads faster. Good job Ed.

CNN reports that US President George W. Bush will – Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, in a speech for Veterans of Foreign Wars – remember the American people of what happened in Vietnam when the US withdrew. Bush will argue that the US should not withdraw from Iraq, because what happened in Vietnam will also happen in Iraq: those who supported the US – and those who did not actively support, but did not resist the US either – will be slaughtered. From the speech: Three decades...

Oops: Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq’s diverse political factions. Where the strategy was first to argue that the military surge would not work,...

Recently, the New York Times had an article up, quoting Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers. Schroeder is a Democratic Liberal who despises conservatives and who seemingly believes that all conservatives are stupid. Her reason for thinking this? Conservatives read less books than liberals. In fact, according to Mrs. Schroeder, this is due to ‘the fact’ that conservatives are not interested in ideas and solutions (let alone complicated matters). No, according...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan I have collected a couple of links to articles about the situation in Turkey / the (likely) election of Gül as Turkey’s next president. As you all will know by now (thanks to Meltem for posting about this topic at my own blog The Gazette), Gül received the most votes in the first round, but not enough votes to become president already. He needs a second (and third) round. Mehmet Ali Birand explains, however, at Turkish Daily News that although Gül did not get...

Marc Moore wrote a fascinating article at The Gazette about “multiculturalism in education.” School is about to start in Texas and all over the state children and teenagers are alternately awaiting and dreading the beginning of another 180-odd days of enlightenment that will be delivered by the finest teachers a sub-standard pay rate, a regressive labor union, and a back-end loaded retirement system can deliver (along with more than a few woefully underqualified football coaches who...