Last week, reflecting on the effusive welcome he received in Germany, Obama said the following to a group of House Democrats: It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning...
Today’s discussion of Ben’s book focuses on what kind of detention law we should have going forward. Given that I am in Israel now I thought it might be useful to offer a comparative example. Such a comparison is particularly useful when proposed legislation is under consideration and another country has similar terrorist threats. The Israeli...
Just in case there is some blogger fairness doctrine I don't know about, I should mention that Obama seems to generally favor the ICC -- though he obviously has reservations about U.S. membership. Here is his clearest statement, made last October: Now that it is operational, we are learning more and more about how the ICC functions. The Court has pursued...
As I write, I am sitting on the balcony of the Castle in Karem Maharal, a few miles north of Caesarea and a few miles south of Haifa. I look out over my balcony at the vineyards drinking Tishbi wine, which has been grown here in Zichron Yaakov for decades. To my left the sun is setting over...
I was struck by this piece tucked away in today's Washington Post, noting that Pat Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management at the State Department, had to remind diplomatic personnel in Germany that they were prohibited from attending Barack Obama's speech today in Berlin. It is a mark of just how unprecedented Obama's current overseas visit is, mixing as it does official...
I really wanted to ignore the Wall Street Journal editorial that Julian mentioned yesterday, filing it in the "life is too short" category. But I can't help myself, because the editorial is just shockingly factually inaccurate -- to say nothing of its rather curious judgment, such as the idea that Bashir "may be the only man able to guarantee...
I know we will be having a discussion of Tom Farer's book on a grand liberal strategy for dealing with terrorism down the road, but I wanted to note that the general issue of 'grand strategy' is at the heart of Philip Bobbitt's new book, Terror and Consent. It has deservedly been widely reviewed and highly praised - Ferguson in...
Honestly, I thought I had seen it all. I had resigned myself to the traditional media doing everything they could to avoid drawing attention to McCain's inability to keep basic facts about foreign policy straight -- Sunni vs. Shia, Czechoslovakia (four times!), Somalia vs. Sudan, the remarkable Iraq/Pakistan border. But I never expected CBS to actually edit an interview with...
As Texas stays on track to execute Jose Medellin on August 5, it is worth shifting our attention back to Texas. I've always thought the ideal solution to the ICJ-Vienna Convention conundrum is for each individual state to independently comply with the ICJ's judgment. Although I think the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention is not entirely persuasive, I think...
Globalization's effect on basketball has been in the news quite a bit recently. I blogged last week about the Iranian national team coming to Salt Lake City to play in the NBA's Rocky Mountain Revue. On Monday, the superb FP Passport blogged about "The NBA's euro problem" -- the fact that more and more NBA players, including American ones, are...
As frustration with the Bush administration's War on Transparency continues to mount, scholars and pundits are beginning to suggest that the U.S. should think about creating a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the administration's many crimes. Nicholas Kristof is one example. Richard Clarke is another. And a third is Katherine Tiedemann, writing in The American Strategist: The South...
The Seventh Circuit last week rendered the most unusual foreign non conveniens decision I have ever read. The case presents a cautionary tale about the impact that foreign judicial corruption can have on domestic litigation. Mañez v. Bridgestone Firestone involved a tort action against Bridgestone Firestone filed in Indiana after José Samuel Mañez-Reyes died in a "rollover" car accident in...
