Citizen Cartwright

Assessing al Qaeda a year after bin Laden's killing

U.S. officials say Osama bin Laden's old team is all but dismantled. But they say new branches are hitting Western targets and U.S. allies overseas — and still aspire to match their parent organization's 9/11 milestone.

“The organization that brought us 9/11 is essentially gone,” says a senior U.S. counterterrorism official. “But the movement ... the ideology of the global jihad, bin Laden’s philosophy — that survives in a variety of places outside Pakistan.”

And U.S. counterterrorism officials and their allies overseas worry about the possibility of home-grown extremists, "lone wolves" radicalized over the Internet or in small cells, but who also now are being encouraged by media outlets connected to al Qaeda and its affiliates.

 

Bin Laden's killing as a presidential campaign issue

President Obama increasingly is "taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man," says The New York Times.

The Obama campaign has released a Web video showing former President Clinton praising Obama, as it questioned whether Mitt Romney would have made the same decision.

Sen, John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama’s Republican opponent four years ago, is hammering the video, saying he's turned “the one decision he got right into a pathetic, political act of self-congratulation. Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad.”

Vice President Biden said in a speech Thursday, “Thanks to President Obama, bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. You have to ask yourself, if Gov. Romney had been president, could he have used the same slogan — in reverse?”

 

What should EPA do about diesel made from palm oil?

Some say the agency's decision could be the most important on climate change this year.

 

GOP blamed for political gridlock

During my 31 years in Washington, I've learned a lot from the analyses of Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, who've seemed to be pretty nonpartisan observers of the way Washington works.

Now they say in a new book: "One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." 

Ornstein says some of his colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute, which is known as a conservative-leaning think tank, "are going to be quite uncomfortable" with him getting behind such a statement.

"We're not exactly neutral or balanced, are we?" says Mann, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. But a central message of their book, he says, is that norms of non-partisanship in the media and elsewhere sometimes do "a disservice to the reality."

Here is the view of an blogger for The Economist magazine, who says Ornstein and Mann are questioning the legitimacy of a party with which they disagree.

I'm interested in your views and those of any reviewers you come across.

The book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” comes out on Tuesday.

 

Also in the news

American drone strikes in Pakistan resume

U.S. special forces help hunt for warlord Kony

Obama signs order to stop colleges from preying on veterans

Secret Service sets new rules for agents on foreign trips

Health insurers’ push to diversify is raising ethical concerns

Ford offers pension buyouts to 90,000 retirees, former workers

Wind farms may have warming effect on local climate

Supercollider discovery: New subatomic particle

FDA approves fast-acting rival to Viagra

Scientists find gene that slows spread of pancreatic cancer

 

 

The significance of Charles Taylor's guilty verdict

In what's being called a historic judgment, the first African president to be prosecuted at an international court has been found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity for supporting rebels who carried out atrocities in Sierra Leone in exchange for "blood diamonds."

The former president of Liberia is the first former head of state to face judgment in an international court on war crimes charges since judges in Nuremberg convicted Karl Doenitz, an admiral who led Nazi Germany briefly after Adolf Hitler's suicide.

The verdict sends a message that tyrants worldwide will be tracked down and brought to justice, says The Associated Press.

But Taylor's fate — which could involve spending the rest of his life in prison — could encourage others to fight to the end rather than trying to negotiate an escape, says the Los Angeles Times.

Taylor stepped down as Liberian president in 2003 in return for avoiding prosecution — and then moved into a mansion in Nigeria.

 

Health insurers to pay $1.3 billion rebate

More than 3 million health insurance policyholders and thousands of employers will share $1.3 billion in rebates this year under a provision of the health care law, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The law requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they collect on medical care and quality improvement or return the difference. 

The report says the rebate requirement may be acting as a brake on the industry, discouraging insurers from seeking big premium increases to avoid having to issue refunds later and face possible criticism.

The rebates are expected to average $127, and Democrats are hoping they'll send an election-year message that President Obama's much-criticized health care overhaul is starting to pay dividends for consumers. Critics of the law say that's wishful thinking.

 

Globally, the trend is toward universal health care coverage

Most people in the world could have affordable health care in a decade, according to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations. 

As of three years ago, nearly 50 nations had nearly universal health coverage, International Labor Organization data show. In China, 95 percent of citizens were covered by the end of last year, the official New China News Agency reported last month.

 

Survey: American voters favor regulating carbon dioxide

Three out of four voters favor regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and a majority think global warming should be a priority for the president and Congress, according to a survey conducted for Yale and George Mason universities.

 

How to comment on genetically modified corn

Friday is the last day to comment on whether the Agriculture Department should approve corn that's genetically modified to be immune to Dow Chemical's herbicide 2,4-D, allowing farmers to spray the chemical to kill weeds without harming the corn.

To comment, click here.