Guest post by Michael Lieberman Michael Lieberman, a Truman National Security Project fellow, is an associate at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington D.C., where he works on international regulatory and compliance issues. He was previously a law consultant at The Asia Foundation. (The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Steptoe & Johnson LLP.) In a recent piece, Stephen Walt takes...

The Failure to Administer Justice — Another Lockerbie Tragedy by Michael Reagan At a time when civilized nations are continuing to wage a collective and challenging fight against terrorist organizations, and the rogue nations that harbor them, this week’s release by Scottish officials of one of the masterminds behind the 1988 Lockerbie bombing constitutes a major setback. Just as importantly, it has...

Guest post by John Malone John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow. In the world of renewables, most of the attention is on the wind and the sun. Geothermal power just hasn’t gotten the same respect. That could be changing, as both the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley are considering the...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a freelance journalist. Ed. note: As part of our ongoing relationship with the Truman National Security Project, I’m pleased to announce that we’ll be cross-posting some pieces from Operation FREE, a new initiative that seeks to raise awareness about the links between climate change, energy,...

Guest post by Peter S. Henne Peter S. Henne is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. Last Friday, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge revealed the obvious — that the George W. Bush Administration had pressured him to raise the terror alert level in advance of the 2004 elections. This is significant for many reasons, but what...

WASHINGTON — Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush? How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: “It’s time to water the tree of liberty”? That would be a reference to Thomas...

Guest Voice posts do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of TMV or its many writers. A Modest Proposal, 2009 Edition by Ed Morrissey I have discovered an unfair disparity in access to a vital resource based on the economic condition of the consumer. This disparity is not just egregious, but it threatens the very core of our American way of life. People routinely get denied adequate and competent service...

Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of TMV or its many writers. Healthcare, Chess and Unintended Consquences by Average Joe In the flap over an Op Ed article penned by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey rehashes a right wing idea I blogged about after the CPAC convention in March. This idea has been widely touted as one of the conservative alternatives to any Democratic plan to overhaul...

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the past we ran a line about Guest Voice posts not necessarily representing the opinion of TMV or its writers. But after we ran many Guest Voice columns by conservative talk show host Michael Reagan (whose posts we run usually once a week from Cagle Cartoons), liberals, moderates etc. we felt it wasn’t necessary to run that line at the top anymore. However, a reader now says this...

America’s Wounded Warriors — Honor, Courage and Sacrifice by Michael Reagan This past week, I was fortunate to play in the Wounded Warrior charity golf tournament. This commendable project aims to raise awareness and enlist the support of the public’s aid for severely injured service men and women while at the same time creating an environment of support which allows these injured heroes to recuperate...

Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, Burma’s popular leader under detention for years, once said that “it is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it…” Now, the Myanmar or Burmese military junta has further extended her house arrest by 18 months. Ms Suu Kyi’s 18-month sentence will prevent her from taking any direct part in the next year’s scheduled general...

Change We Can Believe In? by Ruth Marcus Washington Post Columnist WASHINGTON — Candidate Barack Obama offered a lofty vision of how his White House would operate. When the details of health reform were being hammered out, he vowed, “We’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments...

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the younger sister of the late President John F. Kennedy who founded the Special Olympics and promoted it to the very depths of her soul, has died at 88. As someone who used to write obituaries as part of my stint as a staff reporter on two newspapers (the old Wichita Eagle in Wichita, Kansas and the San Diego Union in San Diego, CA) I know full well the “boilerplate” obits...

So all it took to get two American journalists “convicted” of espionage home was Bill Clinton’s star power? Kim Jung Il just wanted to feel that we felt that North Korea is important enough to send a world-famous, charismatic former President of the United States there to pick up Laura Ling and Euna Lee from the ball and bring them home in his coach?

Dear Readers, Today Joe Gandelman wrote about the ongoing issue of uncivil discourse, “Why don’t I just copy this first sentence and repaste it every week? But here goes: Just when you thought bar on American early 21st century political “debate” has fallen about as far as it can go, you’re wrong….” In that exact vein, here is a Guest Voice by Elijah Sweete, a lawyer of many decades...

Time For A Little Honesty From Public Option Supporters by Jonathan Wells As the Senate wraps up its business and the House heads home for vacation, the debate over health care reform continues. Central to the Democrats’ selling of their health care proposal is the notion that their “public option” won’t lead to government takeover of health care and won’t lead to the destruction...

WASHINGTON — Things are looking up for the Republicans, relatively speaking. President Obama’s poll numbers have dipped, GOP recruitment for the 2010 elections is going better than expected, and the heath care battle has been rough on the Democrats. On top of that, the surveys show Republicans now leading in this year’s two major governor’s races, in Virginia and New Jersey. ...

This week’s solar eclipse grabbed major headlines in Asia and the world (pics here). “Solar eclipses are indeed a marvel of Nature, and the media’s excitement was justified,” says Sri Lankan journalist Nalaka Gunawardene, our Guest Columnist. “For once, it was good to see them devoting a great deal of airtime and print/web space for something that was not violent, depressing or life-threatening. “How...

Blogger Note, the following is by Ian Tanner, a blogger at the Progressive Republican. Reagan Bowling I was sitting in my office listening to Pandora,when I heard a song that started me thinking. The song was called “1985″ by the band Bowling for Soup. The song got me thinking about the current shape of the GOP with regards to the newest generation of voters, the millennials. In case no one is familiar...

Hi there, Dr. E. here. Writing and photographing under the name Michael M’Guire, a colleague in New York has sent me this exclusive photo of just a small part of today’s NY courthouse-encampment– in which we see early-muster photogs and reporters bristling with their silver and black weaponry. The red and white sign in the upper left field says, No Standing Anytime. And below too is Mr. M’Guire’s...

Perhaps you saw how as the attendants moved Michael Jackson, his body lay nearly flat on the stretcher, as though there were an ironing board underneath the sheet, rather than the body of a full person. My guess from just a glance, is that he weighed around 100 pounds or less. Not slender, not thin, rather… entirely skeletal. Most people are familiar with anorexia nervosa, an emotional disorder characterized...

Iran’s Youth and Women’s Movement Analyzed by: Herndon L. Davis For nearly two weeks the ground shifting protests in Iran’s capital city of Tehran has seen an unprecedented number of young people and women who have risked their lives to speak back to the regime in opposition of the suspect re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Their faces, voices and deaths have become the symbol of...

Guest post by Hamid M. Khan While history is replete with revolutions, successful ones are able to match a collective will with an endemic philosophy for change. Days ago, Iranians gathered to elect a president, but in the ensuing firestorm from Iran’s electoral results found reason to challenge Iran’s current government. And while there are almost an infinite number of reasons to alter the Iranian...

Hi, Dr. E. here again tonight, introducing guest voice Mr. Ed Warner, geologist with twenty-six years in exploration geology, including subsurface geology combined with “bright spot”, AVO and 3-D seismic, Offshore Gulf Coast, Michigan Reef Trend, Sacramento Basin and western Kansas Morrow play, and Jonah Field. He is a Libertarian and deeply involved in better outcomes for Zimbabwe. As you will see at end...

Hi there, Dr. E. here. I’d like to introduce you to Senator Ken Gordon, who served as Senate Majority Leader in the Colorado State Legislature until 2009, when term limits kicked in. Over his long career, he has also been former Senate Judiciary Chair, and former Minority Leader in the House. The sentences I bolded below are ones that may catch your eye most. It is rarer than rain in the Mojave desert...