Seattle – According to a Kremlin source reported today on RussiaBlog.org of Discovery Institute in Seattle, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not complete his present term in office nor seek a third term. “According to my sources, Putin will resign before December 2, 2007, when his successor will stand in the next election,” said Yuri Mamchur, managing editor of Russia Blog, and a Read More ›
President Bush is in India this week for the first time, a historic trip that is long overdue. Although terrorism, trade and technology will be major discussion topics with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the rise of China cannot be far from the minds of both men and their respective defense establishments. China’s rapid economic rise and military buildup pose Read More ›
Oh, no. It’s yet another “rising star” governor of the Democratic Party to the rescue! After President Bush’s State of the Union address, Democrats trotted out Tim Kaine, the recently elected “centrist” governor of red-but-increasingly-purple Virginia to present their response. Governor Kaine gave a laundry list of purported ills that afflict America and declared repeatedly, “there is a better way.” Read More ›
In a speech at Georgetown University on January 18th, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threw down the gauntlet at the State Department bureaucracy by expounding “transformational diplomacy” to shift the priority and direction of the department in the post-modern, post-Cold War era. Noting that the State Department has almost as many employees in Germany, with a population of 82 million, Read More ›
ANOTHER new year is upon us, and as we emerge from the holidays, we exchange the greeting “Happy New Year” with our families, neighbors and colleagues. We begin anew for a few days in any case with the hope that this year will be better than the last. Vocabulary often provides much insight into a culture that produces Read More ›
The Christmas season is upon us again. For many, the holidays are about getting together with family and reflecting upon the year. As a naturalized American, I ponder the parents and relatives I left behind in Asia and my life since immigrating to the United States. To borrow Adm. James Stockdale’s immortal words at the 1992 vice presidential debate: “Who Read More ›
Kyeong-Sook Cha and Soon-Hee Ma, two defectors from North Korea, testified for the House Committee on International Relations, and provided firsthand accounts of widespread tragedy occurring in the Sino-North Korean border areas. In order to avoid the massive starvation resulting from North Korea’s failed economy, the daughters of these women had escaped to China to earn money for food. When Read More ›
Predictably, the mainstream media is talking up the “milestone” of the 2,000th American military death in Iraq to portray the struggle as a useless, costly quagmire. According to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, the total number of American military deaths in Iraq, including non-battle deaths, now stands at 2002 in approximately 32 months of combat from March 2003 to October 2005. Read More ›
When I extolled the virtues of our federal system of government in a previous column (“Sovereignty, from sea to sea,” Times op-ed, Sept. 21), I left out an unfortunate and pernicious side effect of having a government of multiple jurisdictions taxes. Multiple layers of government, while encouraging balance of power and competing regulatory ideas, also mean multiple layers of Read More ›