Tim Fernholz

U.N. Dispatch and the Washington Note have convened a bunch of experts for a “salon” on counterterrorism, and the results are worth reading. Greg Djerejian makes some good points in this post about the dangers of our strategy in Afghanistan. Peter Bergen replies in two posts. The first has a good discussion of the bigger […]

Dylan flagged an interesting op-ed in the Times today by economist sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh (recall him from Freakonomics, he was the guy who hung out with gangsters!). His argument that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is outmoded and unresponsive to the housing crisis is a pretty accurate one, but he’s got a few […]

Reuters reports that a coalition of pro-choice Catholic groups has published an open letter to the Pope, calling on him to lift the ban on Catholic use of contraception. (Letter here). Nearly all sexually active Catholics use birth control and 75 percent of Catholics already think that it’s possible to be a good Catholic and […]

One thing I noticed about Obama‘s speech in Berlin was how good he is at bringing up the topics his hosts would rather were left unsaid. He did it was his Father’s Day speech, and at various education unions. But to bring up, in Germany, where anti-Muslim sentiment and xenophobia are prevalent, how “the walls […]

A key part of each Presidential candidate’s foreign policy is recommitting to the conflict in Afghanistan. That’s good at first glance because of the area’s key strategic importance and the humanitarian problems there. But the conflict Afghanistan is worryingly reminiscent of Iraq, and we shouldn’t forget about the terrible quagmire the Soviets found there in […]

Yesterday John McCain took the whole vocabulary people use to talk about the War on Iraq and threw it out the window, all in order to explain away his claim that the Anbar Awakening was a consequence of the Surge even though it actually predated President Bush’s announcement of the escalation. Read Ilan (and watch […]

The president has decided not to veto the Housing Bill that passed the House yesterday. So is it a good bill or not? Speaking to a few experts around town has led me to conclude it is an okay bill — it will help allay the problems of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the short […]

Calling EPI today, I learned that the federal minimum wage is going up tomorrow, all the way to $6.55, but it’s not going up that much: 23 states and the District of Columbia already have higher mandated pay rates. The raise only affects about 40 percent of the workforce. This is not a living wage. […]

A WaPo editorial today characterizes Barack Obama’s Iraq policy as “eccentric” — not sure I’ve ever seen that word employed in political discourse before, so points for that — but bases that judgment on two unusual criteria. One, that General Petraeus opposes a timetable; however, it’s up to the Commander-in-Chief to set strategic goals. Two, […]

The McCain campaign just sent me a statement in which Barack Obama acknowledges that “there’s no doubt that General Petraeus does not want a timetable,” as though that recognition of the obvious means the jig is up. But it raises this important question: If John McCain knows nothing about the economy and most domestic issues […]