Older Feds Aren't Playing to Their Strengths
Is It Too Hard to Fire Misbehaving Feds?
Americans Still Like the Postal Service
A Forced 4-Day Weekend for Many Feds
No More Tax-Cheating Feds, Senators Say
Video: The Daily Show on Apple's Taxes
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
How the Afghan Conflict Will Be Decided
May 16, 2013 KABUL, Afghanistan – Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi thumbs excitedly through a brochure prepared for him by Textron, the U.S. defense contractor. “This is what I want!” the Afghan army chief of staff says, pointing to a picture of the latest technology in armored troop carriers. Outside Karimi’s window, the giant, ...
NATO’s Plan for Afghanistan Post-2014: A ‘Stable Instability’
May 13, 2013 KABUL – Many Americans think we’re winding down in Afghanistan by the end of next year, for better or for worse. We’re not. Despite America’s evident desire to extricate itself from the nation’s longest war, Taliban fighters, criminal gangs and other insurgents continue to terrorize much of Afghanistan, making travel ...
Analysis: Incompetence, but No Cover-up in Benghazi.
May 8, 2013 There was tragic incompetence, plainly, in the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks, and even possibly some political calculation. It is a record that may well come to haunt Hillary Clinton, the first Secretary of State to lose an ambassador in the field in more than three decades, if ...
It’s Obama’s Economy—at Last
March 8, 2013 For most of his first term, President Obama successfully sold a line to the public that economists will tell you is, at least in part, intellectual snake oil. He managed to blame our historically slow economy almost entirely on President George W. Bush. Polls taken right after the 2012 election ...
Analysis: How Obama Fumbled Afghanistan
March 6, 2013 Until he took the job as President Obama’s special representative, Richard Holbrooke was known as one of the toughest, smartest, and most nimble diplomats of his era. He had plenty of ego, but few people doubted Holbrooke’s effectiveness. So what happened to make Holbrooke so seemingly ineffective in dealing with ...
Analysis: The Rehabilitation of Chuck Hagel
February 28, 2013 Having been ushered into his job as Defense secretary with the biggest dissenting Senate vote in U.S. history, Chuck Hagel appears to be already a politically damaged figure. And now, adding injury to insult, the first thing the new Defense secretary must do is go back to the Congress that ...
What’s in the Secret Drone Memos?
February 22, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Despite President Obama’s pledge in his State of the Union address to make the drone program “even more transparent to the American people and to the world,” his administration continues to resist efforts by Congress, even from fellow Democrats, to obtain the full range of classified legal memos justifying “targeted ...
Analysis: Chuck Hagel, Strategic Thinker
February 19, 2013 It looks awfully likely that Chuck Hagel will squeak through confirmation as President Obama's Defense secretary. But it is also likely that he'll enter the Pentagon a damaged figure, a nominee tainted by the lingering impression that he is not ready to handle the vast complexities of a defense budget ...
John Brennan’s Love-Hate Relationship With Drones
February 7, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
With President Obama’s CIA nominee, John Brennan, in the spotlight this week, Washington is engaged in a big debate over the ethics of covert drone warfare. But like it or not, “targeted killing” will continue and perhaps even increase in years to come. The more realistic questions to ask about ...
Why Obama Thanked Hillary
January 28, 2013 In a remarkable moment Sunday night, President Obama explained to CBS’s Steve Kroft that he had requested a 60 Minutes interview jointly with his outgoing secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, because "I just wanted to have a chance to publicly say thank-you." Obama has, in truth, good reason to ...
