Latest Article from M. Zuhdi Jasser

Failing at force protection
The misguided Pentagon report on the Ft. Hood massacre

February 8, 2010  •  The Daily Caller

"On November 5, 2009, the United States Army was viciously attacked from within by an ideologue bent on pursuing an agenda of Islamist extremism. This ideologue fell under the separatist influence of political Islam while serving as an officer. It is incumbent upon our force to begin to understand this theo-political ideology that threatens our soldiers internally and externally."

These critical lines are completely missing from the Pentagon's 84-page report reviewing the massacre of 13 U.S. soldiers and contractors at Fort Hood. Yet this is only one of many omissions that the Pentagon should pursue from this incident.

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Latest Article from Jeff Jacoby

Paying the price for a UMass law school

February 7, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

LAST WEEK'S VOTE by the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education to establish a state-run law school didn't come close to passing the smell test.

The vote authorized the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth to acquire the Southern New England School of Law, a small private institution that had offered to donate itself to the state. Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville called the offer "an extraordinary gift" that for the first time would enable UMass to provide "an affordable, high-quality legal education," all without costing the taxpayers a dime.

In some alternate universe, maybe. In this one, however, the merger will almost certainly cost Massachusetts taxpayers a small fortune.

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Latest Article from Judith H. Dobrzynski

review of My Times in Black and White

February 8, 2010  •  Forbes.com

Why might one pick up a copy of My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times, the posthumously published memoir of Gerald M. Boyd? To some potential readers, the title tantalizingly suggests that Boyd, an African-American who rose to become managing editor of The New York Times under ill-fated executive editor Howell Raines, will detail just how hard it is to be black even at an elite, liberal institution like the Times. Others may see the book as an inspiring story of a child raised in poverty in St. Louis who reached the profession's pinnacle, or thereabouts. Others may want the inside story of how Raines and Boyd lost control of the Times newsroom in 2003 during the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal and were forced to forfeit their jobs. Still others may hope for a fall-from-professional-grace, rise-to-personal-triumph tale.

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Latest Article from Steven Emerson

We're Still Not Serious About Terrorism

February 4, 2010  •  The Daily Beast

It took the-near death of 300 passengers on Christmas Day to suddenly generate the attention and focus on terrorism that has been long overdue. Members of Congress, many with an air of righteous indignation, pummeled the massive counter-terrorist bureaucracy, demanding that the inexcusable series of errors, miscommunications and bureaucratic ineptitude that almost allowed the Christmas Day bomber to succeed be fixed immediately. And then on Tuesday, there was a momentary gasp as the heads of all the intelligence agencies, appearing at televised congressional hearings, universally agreed that they were "certain" that al Qaeda would attempt to strike at the United States in the next six months.

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Latest Article from Clifford May

Eye to Eye on Iran?

February 4, 2010  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Washington's partisan divide is as wide as it's ever been. Democrats and Republicans bitterly disagree on fundamental points of principle and policy. So it should not go unremarked: Last week, the Senate passed — unanimously — a bill that would impose serious sanctions on Iran. A similar bill already has passed the House by a 412-to-12 margin. What explains this sudden outburst of harmony?

Members of Congress from both parties appear to have recognized that if those who now rule Iran acquire nuclear weapons the consequences will be dire.

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Latest from Tevi Troy's Blog

The Tipping Point

February 4, 2010 at 10:14 am

The Wall Street Journal reports that the government share of health spending in the U.S. will pass 50 percent next year, even without passage of the Democratic health bills. This is an important and unfortunate milestone, and it is coming five years earlier than the 2016 date previously predicted. Other depressing tidbits in the article, which come from a new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, included the projection that one fifth of U.S. spending in 2020 will be on health care — up from 17.3 percent of GDP in 2009 — and that overall health spending will hit $4.5 trillion a decade from now.

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Latest Article from Matthew Gurewitsch

Operatic Style Designed to Suit Your Living Room

February 4, 2010  •  The New York Times

AT the end of "La Bohème," as Puccini envisioned the opera, the frail seamstress Mimi dies in bed in a garret overlooking the rooftops of Paris, attended by only her five bohemian cronies. As seen live on Swiss television in September, she boarded an empty bus from a curb outside a shopping mall, leaving not only her friends but an indeterminate number of onlookers. Then the bus pulled away, pursued for a time by her stricken lover Rodolfo until he collapsed on the pavement.

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Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

Aid to Yemen: Throwing Good Money After Bad?

February 3, 2010  •  House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Written Testimony

Chairman Berman, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen, and distinguished Members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, I commend you for holding this important and timely hearing. Moreover, I wish to thank you for the opportunity to address you today about the challenges of supporting the counterterrorism effort in Yemen.

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Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Russia's Real Threat? Failure
Decline breeds new and perplexing dangers

February 1, 2010  •  Washington Times

There's an old saying, familiar to historians and foreign policy practitioners, that "geography is destiny." A modern twist to this rule is that demography is no less decisive.

Russia is finding this out the hard way. Over the past several years, under the direction of former President (and current Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin and his handpicked protege, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia may have re-emerged on the international scene with a vengeance. But behind all of the Kremlin's contemporary geopolitical bluster, the successor state of the once-mighty Soviet Union is caught in a demographic and socioeconomic death spiral.

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Latest Article from Michael Rubin

A Watershed Election

February 1, 2010  •  National Review Online

After the Iraqi parliament banned 500 candidates from contesting the March 7 national elections, Vice President Joseph Biden rushed to Baghdad to urge Iraqi political leaders to reconsider. While the ban has fueled U.S. cynicism about Iraqi democracy, such cynicism is unwarranted, especially now.

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Latest from Frederick M. Hess's Blog

Obama vs. That Darn Constitution

January 29, 2010 at 12:38 pm

The Obama administration may need a bit of a refresher on the U.S. Constitution. In a peculiar move, the administration has announced that its "incentive-based" education reform strategy is now going to extend to its dealings with Congress. If Congress behaves and reauthorizes No Child Left Behind this year (a feat that seems highly unlikely at this point) and does so "consistent with the president's plan," the administration announced this week that it is going to make an extra $1 billion available for edu-spending.

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Latest Article from Soner Cagaptay

Muslims vs. Islamists

January 27, 2010  •  Hurriyet Daily News

I am thankful to Mr. Umaru Abdul Mutallab, the father of the failed Christmas day bomber. In late 2009, Mr. Abdul Mutallab, a Muslim, approached U.S. authorities in his native Nigeria to warn them of his son's slide into Islamist ideology. Mr. Abdul Mutallab's altruistic initiative is a case in point about the conflict between Muslims and Islamists.

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