Steve Clemons has a transcript of the speech Chuck Hagel gave to a foreign policy gathering at the Brookings Institution yesterday. It was a sober, reflective speech advocating a policy of US engagement with the world through media other than, or at least in addition to, bombs.

As a substantive political project, E.J. Dionne is right – conservatism is finished. While he didn’t mention it, my pet example is the provision in the (failed) law to pre-empt state policies prohibiting tips from being counted against the minimum wage. When I mentioned the proposed law to my wife Dr. Brazen Hussy, she [...]

Despite increasingly favorable political tea leaf readings, Democrats are far from a lock to recapture Congress in whole or part come November. The GOP still enjoys a fund-raising advantage over Democrats, and has enjoyed considerable success at suppressing Democratic turnout in recent elections. Democrats are closing the financial gap, but their own vote suppression [...]

Want to be perceived as tough on crime? Go out and commit a murder. Want to be seen as a deficit hawk? Run up the debt as far and as fast as you can. Want to champion civil liberties? Violate them early and often. Need to burnish your national security credentials? Support the biggest national security blunder in modern history.

Continuing on the theme of Jacob Weisberg’s wayward brain: characterizing the invasion of Iraq as “a terrible mistake” is a blatant abuse of language. A terrible mistake is something like accidentally amputating the wrong limb. Iraq is more akin to deliberately amputating the wrong limb on the theory that doing so will heal the afflicted [...]

The outpouring of angst from those Lieberman fans aptly described by Michael Tomasky as “neurasthenic Victorians” is slowing. Tomasky was writing in Slate the day after Slate editor Jacob Weisberg took to his bed with the vapors.
Lieberman is getting virtually no overt support from the Democratic Leadership Council, which organization he once chaired, and the [...]

The Pentagon and Republicans are collaborating to prevent troops suffering combat head injuries from receiving adequate treatment.
In their ongoing war against the men and women who are actually going to war at their behest, House Republicans cut the budget of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC)by half, while the Pentagon is refusing [...]

Henceforth we will recognize that anything which fulfills certain conditions is a sign.
– Charles Morris, “Signs, Language and Behavior”
Among the startling characteristics of the Bush administration and their various adventures is the speed with which contemporary events and documents become historical artifacts. They’ve authored so many accidental and deliberate grotesqueries, and so much of [...]

An expert demanding distrust of experts, Levitt sets a high bar for himself.

Fred Kaplan has an interesting column in Slate today addressing Bush’s confusion about, among other things, the meaning of the word “strategy.” The column isn’t really interesting per se — it’s one among many similar pieces arising from all quarters recently — but Kaplan does draw attention to one of the president’s more persistent verbal [...]

The ever disreputable Swopa, whose foreign policy analysis is both obsessive and superb, has detected a rash of strained national psyches. President Bush, he notes, offered during his press conference last Monday that our times “are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country.” And Saturday, the New York [...]

British troops pulled out of a base in southern Iraq on short notice Thursday, and by Friday evening the base was completely stripped as a heavily outnumbered Iraqi army brigade watched while some 5,000 looters “stole everything — even the bricks.”
The Brits responded to the news with classic stiff upper lip-ism. From the Washington Post [...]