The fundamental question is whether American’s preference for divided government will be sufficient to overcome their anger and desire to punish Republicans for the disaster of the Bush administration.

I agree with everything Chris has to say here. If Afghanistan has any hope of recovering, it’ll have to be via standard of living improvements, and nobody can make a living if we destroy their only cash crop. Especially when we could be buying it to produce legal pain killers. In other news, it sounds [...]

This is not good news… Surprisingly enough, Christopher Hitchens thinks Obama has the right plan when it comes to Pakistan… Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally. He [...]

Andrew Sullivan pens one of the more level headed walks through the post Cold War era and details where we find ourselves now and where we must go… The end of the Cold War was an opportunity to create a new one. For some, we now realize, the Cold War was not about democratic values [...]

Provided in full by MSNBC… Ultimately I think this speech was a worldwide call to unite in the War on Terrorism, and in that respect I think it could help him. What did you think?

Do we really think that this many people could be a threat to our national security? From AFP: A watch list of suspected and known terrorists, compiled by the US authorities, has ballooned and contains more than one million names, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday. The ACLU said it derived that figure from [...]

In this podcast we discuss (1) the shake up in the McCain Campaign, (2) Obama’s statement on revising his Iraq strategy, (3) Obama and his history with low income housing subsidies for private developers and (4) rumors about McCain’s VP announcement timetable… [Listen Online] or [Download] [Subscribe to 2008Central.net's Presidential Election Podcast] Feel free to [...]

I covered this back on June 27th, and at that time the group had around 550 members. What a difference a week makes, eh? Not only that, this group is now the biggest on his website now. TPM points to a story from USA Today about the group… In recent days, Obama has criticized the [...]

In a Rose Garden news conference today, President Bush said he hopes to be able to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan by the end of this year. While there’s nowhere near a guarantee that Iraq will be stable enough for this kind of redeployment, the move would likely cause some tension amongst Democrats running [...]

I’m sure you’ve heard the reports of what this process actually feels like (a slow drowning), so I’ll spare you Hitchens’ explanation. Instead, let’s look at the aftermath… The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I [...]

Given our lack of attention to this region, is it much of a surprise that the former regime is getting stronger? A new Pentagon report says the Taliban has regrouped after its initial fall from power in Afghanistan. The new report offers a rather dim view of progress in the nearly 7-year-old war, declaring that [...]

As hinted at yesterday, it’s happening and this decision will no doubt have far reaching consequences… The announcement came after North Korea handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials on Thursday, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process. Bush called the declaration a positive step along a long road [...]

Could this be a sign that our policy of engaging in carrot and stick diplomacy actually worked? From the Washington Note: Tonight, The Washington Note confirmed that the Bush administration will “ask Congress” to de-list North Korea from America’s “terrorist watch list.” This request will be made on Thursday — if there are no last [...]

In a recent interview with John McCain, Fortune magazine began with the question: what do you think is the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy? McCain could have answered such a question in any number of ways, but this is what he said: Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the [...]

Reprinted in full… “Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the [...]

A lot of left wing blogs are hammering Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi for reaching a compromise on the FISA legislation, but this is difficult bi-partisanship at work and it ultimately means getting to a better place than we previously were. From Wash Post: Ending a year-long battle with President Bush, the House approved, 293 [...]

He went before Congress today and told us a lot of what we already know. But, again, it looks like this was definitely one of those cases where people wanted to wish that nothing happened instead of accepting the reality that Libby (and Rove and Cheney) were intimately involved with this leaking. Excerpted liberally from [...]

George Will takes issue with John McCain’s statement that the recent Supreme Court decision on Guantanamo detainees was one of the “worst decisions in history.” Will’s complaint is as much about McCain’s hyperbole as it is about McCain’s opposition to the ruling. As Will notes, this is not a clear-cut matter and people of good [...]

And considering we have about 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, the overall percentage proves that Afghanistan has been a much, much deadlier place for quite some time. Not surprisingly, I found this news in a story about an attack by the Taliban that freed hundreds of inmates from an Afghan prison: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – U.S. and [...]

Can you tell it’s an election year? From Swampland comes this transcript of McCain’s statements during a town hall… The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to [...]