The New Republic

According to the Los Angeles Times, the CIA made a major push last year to put agents into Pakistan and try to smoke out Osama bin Laden. They never found him, but they did find something even more disturbing: READ MORE >>

Ed Koch has written a commentary on the state of the war and the state of the Democrats. He says what he means. It's not exactly how I read the situation. But he may be right...about everything here. May 14, 2007 Sadly, the war in Iraq appears to be lost. The Democrats, like terriers shaking a rat (Iraq) using a plan of funding war for three months -- salami tactics -- causing the Army command to recognize that the Congress, not the President, is effectively in charge, have achieved their goal: implementing withdrawal. READ MORE >>

I just caught a Washington Times reporter on Fox News remarking that Mitt Romney's Mormonism is "an unusual faith." No quibble from me there, but is Mormonism any more "unusual" a religion than the one founded by the guy who owns The Washington Times? --James Kirchick READ MORE >>

by Richard Stern "The killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going into communion in the body of Christ," said Pope Benedict XVI thirty-odd-thousand feet in the air en route to Brazil, the country with more Roman Catholics than any other in the world. I would love to hear the learned and benevolent pope's views on the death of a thirty-week-old fetus in a tornado of the sort that just annihilated a small Kansas town, but I guess that God does not need to go into communion in the body of His Son. READ MORE >>

by Casey BlakeDavid Brooks was delighted by the response he received when he popped the Reinhold Niebuhr question to Barack Obama a week or so ago. "I love him." Obama said. "He's one of my favorite philosophers." Needless to say, Brooks was impressed. "So I asked, What do you take away from him?" READ MORE >>

Martin Peretz praises the vision and analysis of Fouad Ajami; read recent pieces by Ajami here (a review for TNR of Ali Allawi's book on the occupation) and here (an essay for The Wall Street Journal on Iraq); David Fontana READ MORE >>

Media Matters takes us back to May 1, 2003, when the "Mission Accomplished" banner unfurled, the president strutted onto the USS Abraham Lincoln in his parachute harness, and media figures dropped to their knees on live TV. Like this little guy: READ MORE >>

Eve Fairbanks reports on the new grassroots organizations trying to steer (and sometimes punish) congressmen; Dennis Ross suggests that Tehran needs sticks, not carrots; he also chats with Frank Foer about Iran and his new book, READ MORE >>

I read what I can about Syria, and the latest book I read (today) is by John Borneman, professor of anthropology at Princeton University. It's called Syrian Episodes: Sons, Fathers, and an Anthropologist in Aleppo (Princeton University Press). First of all, the book is gorgeously written. Second, it is the anthropology of experience rather than the anthropology of abstruse theory, an unfashionable sort of anthropology. READ MORE >>

The best press release ever: READ MORE >>