Laura Secor writes in the New Yorker about the bass-ackward effects of the Iranian government's decision to televise the show trials.  I think she misses a key point, however:  Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a h...

The Pew Global Attitudes project has released their 2009 report, which means we finally have some hard numbers to see whether the election of Barack Obama has altered global perceptions of the United States.  And it turns out the answer is yes in ...

The Boston Globe's Joseph Williams reports on why Harold Koh is facing difficulties getting confirmed as the State Department's legal advisor.  This part stood out for me:  Like many other...

Two months after Foreign Policy revamped its website, Foreign Affairs has done something similar.  No blogs, but a jazzy new website.    One big change is that it's now at...

VP Joe Biden gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference today that made quite a splash.  The main themes of the speech were about American outreach to Iran and Russia, Still, the Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reported the following oddity:...

As my boss U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth arrives in Pyongyang, I think it's worth noting that the North Korean government has not been endearing itself to its citizenry.  Hmmm... let me rephrase that -- the DPRK government has been acting with even more...

The following is an exchange between myself and someone who had clearly taken over a friend's e-mail account, and was attempting to get me to wire money to them.  All of the text is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent: ...

Over at the Monkey Cage, Andrew Gelman creates a new conceptual category: One thing I realized is that everybody hates Starbucks. From the left, Starbucks is a creepy bit of corporate America, whereas the right sees the ubiquitous chain of coffee...

Hey, remember last year when there was a lot of populist hostility to the whole bailout idea because it was going to cost the taxpayers a truckload?  It's funny how things turn out:  The Treasury Department expects to recover all but $42...

So, Pew has a new survey of elite and mass attitudes about foreign policy, and it's chock-full of interesting results.  Turns out Americans sound pretty realist right now: In the midst of two wars abroad and a sour economy at home, there has...