Citizen Cartwright

What the Mideast upheaval means for the United States

What's a superpower to do? How to back other people's democratic aspirations when their repressive leaders are such reliable allies?

Some U.S. and Arab strategists are saying that the United States could end up in its weakest position in the region in half a century.

Beyond Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, U.S. allies including Jordan, the Gulf emirates and Saudi Arabia are seen as vulnerable to political agitation.

And one line of thinking goes that they could pull away from the United States out of the belief that Egyptian President Mubarak's close ties to Washington are a main reason he's so unpopular.

In Egypt, the standoff continues for a seventh day

Protesters are on the streets again Monday, as some call for a "march of millions" on Tuesday to continue the pressure for change.

The opposition on Sunday coalesced around Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as a transition figure.

ElBaradei, a diplomat who headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, has lived abroad for many years and his cosmopolitanism is a "source of suspicion" among some Egyptians, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, apparently contradictory signals from the army suggest that the question of who will rule Egypt remains very much in doubt, The Washington Post says.

Syria's strongman is talking reform

President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled for four decades and is not in the column of reliable U.S. allies, says in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the Mideast protests are ushering in a "new era" and that Arab rulers need to do more to accommodate their people's rising political and economic aspirations.

Filling the political vacuum in Tunisia

While the country is largely secular, this month's overthrow of the country's president has enabled long-suppressed Islamic groups to emerge from hiding and begin pursuing their political agendas, the Los Angeles Times says.

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Egyptian security services are bracing for protests

As Friday prayers end, anti-government protesters are expected to take to the streets for the biggest protests yet.

The government has blocked Internet and mobile services, media are reporting.

U.S., Japan warned to deal with their debt

The International Monetary Fund says the Group of Seven's two biggest economies need to spell out credible deficit-cutting plans before "the markets lose patience and dump their bonds," as Reuters puts it.

Standard & Poor's cut Japan's long-term debt rating on Thursday for the first time since 2002, and Moody's said the risk of the United States losing its top AAA rating, though small, was rising.

U.S. outstanding public debt has grown to more than 60 percent of total output since the financial crisis, and Japan's outstanding long-term government debt is about 180 percent of its gross domestic product.

But most of Japan’s debt is held domestically, unlike U.S. debt.    

Senators aren't rushing to join the Tea Party Caucus

Only four lawmakers showed up at the caucus' first meeting on Thursday.

The low turnout "shows how the purposefully disjointed movement and its crop of outspoken and controversial leaders, although a powerful force in a campaign known as the 'year of the Tea Party,' are still viewed as risky allies even for conservative politicians," the Los Angeles Times says.

Ill. Supreme Court decision keeps Emanuel in mayor's race

Within minutes of the ruling, Emanuel was working to recapture "an aura of invincibility he had worked hard to project" until an appellate court ruling threatened to boot him from race, the Chicago Tribune says.

Emanuel has a "huge" lead in fundraising and a 2-to-1 edge over his closest rival in a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll.

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