WASHINGTON — Imagine a time when government work was exciting, widely admired, and much sought after. It seems an outlandish thought at a moment when you cannot turn on your television without hearing government spoken of as almost an alien creature. It is cast as far removed from the lives of average Americans and more likely to destroy the achievements of private citizens than to accomplish anything...

Guest post by Ziad Haider Ziad Haider is an MPA/JD candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and Georgetown Law, and a Truman National Security Fellow. He conducted field research on governance in FATA with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in the summer of 2008 and previously worked as a foreign policy advisor in the U.S. Senate. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent three-day visit to...

Mix Apple with Politics – Not a Good Recipe By Daryl Cagle I’m holding my breath. I’m now into my third month of waiting for Apple to approve my iPhone app. Yesterday I heard from Apple that they need more time to think about it. My app is pretty cool; it is called “MSNBC.com Cartoons” and it features a real time news feed of political cartoons by top cartoonists from around the world. My app will...

This GUEST VOICE piece is by Rafael Jesús González from California, on Veterans’ Day 2009. It is a perspective on ‘supporting the troops’ …or not. I brought it here to give a small x-ray into how one family’s three generations of soldiers is evolving nearly ninety years after what was supposed to have been ‘the war to end all wars, World War One’ …GUEST VOICE...

The Iraqi Army Diaries—entry 3 By s d liddick In the spring of 2009 I embedded with the U.S. Army’s 1-63 Combined Arms Battalion, in the small town of Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The town is a cardinal point on what American soldiers have termed the Triangle of Death. Within a month I was offered a de facto embed spot with the Iraqi Army (IA), by General Mohammed, commander of the 17th Division....

Israel-Monsters and Arab Cartoonists By Daryl Cagle The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians still looms large in political cartoons around the world, with an endless flow of cartoons from Arab countries showing monster-Israel assaulting, eating, crushing or somehow decimating the poor Palestinians. The dove of peace has been killed by Israel in every imaginable cartoon — crushed, squeezed, stabbed,...

Guest post by Jared Stancombe Jared Stancombe is a 2009 graduate of Indiana University, where his studies focused on peace and conflict studies in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. His other academic interests include counterinsurgency and complex military operations. He is currently an analyst for a U.S. government agency responsible for national security and is in the officer selection process...

What Ousted GOP Candidate Endorsing Dem in Messy NY Race Means by Jon Wells The drama over the special election in NY-23 has taken a variety of surprising turns over the past few weeks. The Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was selected by a county board of GOP supervisors and got a load of initial cash and support from the national Republican establishment. But a plethora of her policy stands made many...

Poking the Cobra Raging Moderate, by Will Durst Now is the time for all good men to put their hands together, pull them apart and rapidly put them back together again, and repeat, to give props to the president for not curling up into a fetal position with a “Kick Me” sign taped to his butt. You know. Like a Democrat. He’s taking it straight to his perceived enemy, calling both Fox News and Rush Limbaugh...

Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans. His very name made his life’s work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a Federal judge for the Eastern District of Texas. That’s right, he was “Justice Justice.”...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a free-lance journalist. I work with veterans on a daily basis. Lately, I’ve been burning the midnight oil as part of Operation FREE, a coalition of veterans groups and national security organizations that are looking to raise awareness about the links between climate change and national security. We’re...

WASHINGTON — Will the young and hopeful abandon the political playing field to older voters who are angry? That is the quiet crisis confronting President Obama and the Democrats. Left unattended, it could become a formidable obstacle for them in next year’s midterm elections. Moreover, the sour mood that has gripped the nation’s politics could only further turn off the young. This means...

WASHINGTON — Now, two people will have to choose. The fate of the health care bill is largely in the hands of Barack Obama and Olympia Snowe. The Finance Committee’s vote on Tuesday to send its bill to the Senate floor vindicated President Obama’s strategy of giving Congress wide latitude to write the early drafts. Major health reform has advanced further than it ever has before. ...

Hello Readers, Dr. Estés here, bringing you another GUEST VOICE by Mr. Elijah Sweete who tells us that Texas Gov. Perry has now replaced a fourth member of the commission investigating death row inmate, C.T. Willingham’s, potential innocence. The Governor has now in the last month, removed four persons from the investigative commission, raising the dark question about whether a sitting Governor is attempting...

Intellectual Conservatism Isn’t Dead: Maintaining a Consistent Philosophy by Rick Moran This is the last in my series on the state of intellectual conservatism. Previous articles can be found in order here, and here, and here, and here. If, as we’ve discovered, intellectual conservatism has been marginalized, and its adherents are in bad odor with much of the base, then conservatism as it is advanced...

Adoption: An Overlooked Crisis by Michael Reagan As our health care system is debated in Congress and we continue to face down pro-choice challenges in the bill, I want to take the time to remind all of us of another vulnerable segment of our population. This is one area in which we should be in full agreement, but still one we too often overlook: the thousands of children in need of adoption by loving families...

Nobel Peace Prize now officially a joke after Obama selection by Jon Wells The Nobel Peace Prize was already flirting with irrelevance after recent selections like Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, and Jimmy Carter, but after the award was yesterday announced as going to President Barack Obama, in office for only nine months and for only 12 days when the nomination period expired, the award can officially be said to...

Intellectual Conservatism Isn’t Dead: It’s On the Margin by Rick Moran This is the 4th in a series of 5 articles on the state of intellectual conservatism. Here’s Part I. Part II. And Part III. There is a terrific exchange of views on the health of conservatism over at Slate between conservative writer Reihan Salam and Sam Tannenhaus (author of Death of Conservatism). Salam is author (with...

Guest post by Rafael Noboa Rivera Rafael Noboa Rivera is a writer and combat veteran. He served in Iraq from April 2003 to March 2004. This post originally appeared at The Hill‘s Congress Blog. “You never have 100% certainty. If you wait till you have that, you’ll fail.” The evidence is unmistakable. We have hard choices before us. As the impact of irreversible climate change and the...

Intellectual Conservatism Isn’t Dead: Channel Your Inner Elder by Rick Moran This is the third in a series of 5 articles on the state of intellectual conservatism. Part I can be found here. Part II is here. Few speechwriters of the modern era can match the record of Peggy Noonan when it comes to memorable presidential addresses. Teddy Sorenson was of a different era but managed several significant, and...