The Wall Street Journal

Nearly a year after the tragic shooting of 17 Iraqis by Blackwater security contractors, the Department of Justice is close to indicting six of the guards involved in the horrific events. This is a long overdue step toward holding contractors legally responsible for their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But this positive move risks being overshadowed by a more destabilizing development: the apparent agreement, as part of U.S.-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement negotiations, to revoke the immunity from Iraqi law that private security contractors have enjoyed… more

Under pressure from the U.S., Europe and the IMF, representatives of 25 sovereign wealth funds managing about $3 trillion in assets met last week in Singapore to discuss how to allay fears about their investments. These large pools of government-controlled wealth are investing in everything from Barclays and Citigroup to New York's Chrysler Building. As they transcend traditional boundaries between foreign policy, financial markets and national security, it is natural that Western capitals are worried.

However, shining the spotlight too brightly on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) may… more

...The great American campaign speech is obviously hard to pull off and, for the readers among us, now hard to find. Students no longer stand before classrooms and recite the hallowed words of past office-holders and -seekers, and the small volumes of political speeches that once lined every American library – I cadged some splendid ones when Dartmouth's Baker Library disposed of its collection 35 years ago – are a thing of the past.

 Thus the offerings in Michael A. Cohen's Live From the Campaign Trail meet… more

* This article was excerpted from "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.

The Old Consensus

When Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election by 16 million votes, carrying only six states and faring worse than any major-party candidate since Alf Landon in 1936, nobody seriously entertained the possibility that conservatism would rise from his defeat, let alone that the race might mark the beginning of a… more

"It's not unusual for an American administration to avoid urging reluctant parties into peace negotiations," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator based at Washington's New America Foundation. "But it's unprecedented for the U.S. not to get behind and encourage a peace negotiation once it's been launched." LINK

[Google] Co-Founder Larry Page this week made an unprecedented appeal to policy makers for access to unused television airwaves.

Page made his first trip to Washington, D.C., Wednesday and Thursday to meet with members of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.

Speaking at a public event Thursday, Page said the unused airwaves, dubbed… more

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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s April 29 event that highlighted the presidential candidates' domestic policy plans appeared in David Wessel’s column in The Wall Street Journal (5/1/08). New America's Health Policy Program Director is quoted in the article.

 . . Mr. Nichols says that Sen. McCain's plan to allow people in one state to buy individual insurance in another -- essentially deregulating this part of the insurance market -- amounts to "ideology trumping policy."… more

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.  . . Mr. Nichols says that Sen. McCain's plan to allow people in one state to buy individual insurance in another -- essentially deregulating this part of the insurance market -- amounts to "ideology trumping policy." Rational insurers will attract the healthy with low premiums and boost premiums for those with pre-existing conditions. "Fifty to 75 million Americans will discover what 'actuarially fair' really means," he says. (Sharply higher premiums.) The result, he predicts, will be… more

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A broad coalition of federal budget experts, spanning the ideological spectrum of Washington think tanks from left to right, proposed Monday that Congress and the president set explicit, “sustainable” long-term budgets for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and create a mechanism that would force changes when projected spending exceeds budgeted amounts. . . Among the other participants are scholars from the American Enterprise Institute, Concord Coalition, New America Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute and Urban Institute. The work… more

It has been more than five decades since any political party in America has had a brokered convention, and for political junkies a heated battle at the Democratic convention seems like a tantalizing possibility. But for Democrats, a protracted nomination battle, culminating in a convention fight, could undermine the party's hopes of reclaiming the White House this fall.

Since voters in Ohio and Texas breathed new life into Hillary Clinton's campaign, some have argued that the current stalemate will not hurt… more