The mind boggles. Sure, USIP is not immune from criticism, but this is sheer intellectual vandalism.

'Can you believe that "in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt," private wealth translates into great political power and vice-versa?  What is it like, wonders the curious and concerned [New York] Times reader, to live in a country like that?  No wonder there's an uprising.'

I have covered this issue previously, but it is a good summary of the story of the fake Obama birth certificates.

Brilliant piece by Levy, who was on Cambridge University Students Union's executive committee with me many years ago.

"Indeed, nowhere else across the spectrum of major foreign-policy issues -- not Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, or China -- has the Obama administration invested so much effort for so little. What killed the process was not a change in the Palestinian position, but in the Israeli one... The Obama administration could just wash its hands of the whole…

After all, why bother to look at the facts if you already know the Truth?

"In geopolitical terms, the US spends a lot more on its military than anyone else (in fact, more than everyone else put together) and (contrary to the beliefs of most Americans) hardly anything on development aid or other efforts at promoting global public goods. The amount of sustainable influence generated as a result appears pretty trivial…

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it would have to review two weeks' worth of procedure after determining it had mistakenly based its last three rulings on a copy of the Belgian constitution left in the justices' chambers. "When I presented my case on legal citizenship status under proposed changes to immigration law, I w…

"What is a Glock, and what is it designed to be used for? It’s a rapid-fire weapon that can accommodate a 30-bullet clip, and it has only one real use. It’s of very little value for hunting or for Grandma to keep under her pillow to repel burglars. What it is good for is the killing of groups of human beings by a single shooter, and for nothi…

"...why don’t people at the 90th percentile of the income distribution feel particularly rich? The answer is simple: because any Americans who are richer than this cohort are so *much* richer."

"The reactions to WikiLeaks share one abiding characteristic, so obvious that it can easily be overlooked, namely an unwillingness to address with any sophistication or seriousness the complex and everchanging world that the US -- and all of us -- must now deal with. The prevailing and lazy assumption is implied but all too clear: that the fo…

Excellent piece

Isn't the American legal system amazing?

The best of Five Thirty-Eight.

I'm not sure that I really agree with Drezner. Many academic international relations specialists are far behind the reality of what is happening anyway. I hope Wikileaks may shake up the better ones and humble the worse ones. Sure, primary materials written now and made available in thirty years' time may become more guarded, but I am no…

This may only be a brief interlude, but it makes for a really interesting moment in which the spotlight is on real foreign policy instead of caricature.

1) this will damage US diplomacy, for sure; 2) it will damage several governments mentioned in the cables, especially Yemen (see this devastating telegram); 3) it will take a while and a lot of promises by US diplomats that their comms are really really secure this time for other diplomats to trust US diplomats with confidences again; 4) the cable…

Some of the books are not in fact by advisers.

Iraq Body Count has patiently and consistently tabulated recorded deaths since the invasion. It has now conducted a preliminary analysis of a sample of the incidents recorded in the documents (including all the larger ones) (see Paul Rogers, “The harvest of war: from pain to gain”, 28 October 2010).This concludes that the logs both confirm the maj…

1) We have got an unprecedented degree of concentrated income and wealth at the very top of our society. The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now makes more than the bottom 120 million. 2) Courtesy of a grotesque opinion by the Supreme Court of the United States, we now have virtually unlimited money flowing from the rich and from corpora…

Why abstention may be the right choice - with reference to Tuesday's elections, but with wider applicability.

Genuine tweet message from President Medvedev to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Rogue superpower?

Civilian control of the military - nice idea in theory, not actually practiced in Washington

Excellent commentary - transferable to many situations.

Nate Silver talks sense

Nate Silver talks even more sense

A Cypriot commentator on how the leader of the Russian spy ring skipped bail: "even by our own high standards of incompetence, what happened was incredible."

One should never laugh at a fourth generation politician just because his name strikes you as slightly funny. But sometimes the temptation is irresistible.