I was honored to be invited to give a keynote speech at an Intelligence Community legal conference. The speech was entitled Toward Greater Transparency of National Security Legal Work. The main question I addressed was: “How should [the intelligence community] think about and react to the government’s growing inability to keep secrets?”
In October 2009, the Obama White House launched a concerted attack against critical press coverage, one unparalleled since the days of the Nixon White House. In one respect, Barack Obama and Richard Nixon were in agreement: both perceived a distinctly liberal bias in the media.
Twenty senior former CIA officials—including every CIA Director (including DCIs) dating back to William Webster (1987-91)—wrote a letter to the NYT to take issue with NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet’s defense (in this interview on Lawfare) of his decision to publish the names of the three covert CIA operatives in a story a few weeks ago.
Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. The First Amendment to the Constitution was designed to protect the obnoxious, the provocative, the uncouth, and the creepy — on the principle that if the foulmouths can say or express what they wish and the public can put up with it, then everyone else is assured of free speech.
Twenty years after his presidency ended, Harry Truman reflected on firing General Douglas MacArthur, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
Credit where credit is due. Lynton Crosby is getting the plaudits for the Conservative party’s successful election strategy, but the real architect of this victory was surely George Osborne, the chancellor. In England, the Conservatives won because Mr Osborne was right and his critics were wrong.
Congressional Republicans are engaged in an important internal discussion over how best to use the arcane procedural mechanism known as “budget reconciliation.” Making the right decision about how to employ reconciliation could be the difference between a successful start to a conservative policy revival, or a lost year.
What a breathless, barmy time this is. The exit polls made monkeys of us all, which was a fitting way for these Neanderthal elections to conclude. As of this writing, the Tories look certain to form the next government of Britain, which no one would have dared say just 24 hours ago, when all political talk revolved around the contentious notion of a “hung” parliament.
The Hoover Institution Press released Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law, an examination of the speeches of the Obama administration on national security legal issues, detailing their positions on principles currently contested at both the domestic and the international level.
Hoover fellow Herb Lin discusses the NSA ruling by a federal appeals court in New York, which ruled that the once-secret NSA program that is systematically collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is not in compliance with the Patriot Act. Congress can fix this and since Congress is working on revising the law the appeals court did not tell the NSA that they had to stop collecting data.
Hoover fellow Tim Kane discusses why the Saudi King declined the invitation to the Gulf Nations Summit at Camp David. The idea for the summit was to reassure traditional allies that we formed a united front in dealing with Iran. The absence of the Saudi King is evidence of a deep rupture in the US-Saudi relationship.
Hoover fellow Tunku Varadarajan discusses the general elections in the UK, where Labour fared poorly, and the Tories were re-elected. Varadarajan discusses what this means for the UK as well as what it means for the US.
Hoover fellow Tim Kane discusses immigration and says that increased immigration is good for growth but immigration has a short term negative effect on wages. Immigrants increase the supply of labor and thus lower costs on the goods they produce but they also increase demand on the goods that they buy.
“One of the things we were worried about was that winter was a tough time, hours of work did not bounce back. That's symptomatic of a weak recovery,” said Lazear, chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson told Fox News Sunday that it's "very condescending" to poor people to tax them at lower rates than rich people. He called for a flat tax along the lines of a biblical tithe, in which rich and poor alike pay a tenth or so of their income in taxes.
quoting Larry Diamondvia International Policy Digest
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
According to Larry Diamond of Stanford University: “[The] surge of money from oil often has insidious effects on the greater economy: the influx of oil money fuels inflation, distorts exchange rates, undermines the competitiveness of traditional export sectors such as agriculture, and preempts the growth of manufacturing.”
Larson began some preliminary research several years ago, visiting the Lusitania archive at Stanford University. There, something uncanny happened. Sitting in the library of Stanford's Hoover Institution, "minding my own business," an archivist suddenly plopped something down on the desk.
"We chased them for three years, trying to get their assistance in pushing forward a political transition, and failed," said Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia. "I am not optimistic that they will be more cooperative now."
Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist who used to be a famous economist, is on his way to becoming the Bill Nye of the economics world — minus the admirable frankness about changing his mind. Niall Ferguson took to the pages of the Financial Times to woodshed Krugman over his relentlessly hostile account of the United Kingdom’s economic situation under the Conservatives.
The key insight that both leaders had about voters is that they are not as short-sighted as they are commonly believed to be. In their famous 1981 essay, “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government,” professors Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard developed a model of voter behavior in which growth-oriented policies are sometimes rewarded by the deciding median voter.
Russia is in the news again. NATO ministers continue to discuss how to upgrade their response capabilities to contain Russia, an increasingly unpredictable neighbor. Pentagon officials advise Congress that Russia is a top military threat. Meanwhile, President Putin ramps up his military modernization. Could this finally be the end of strong Russia-U.S. cooperation in the one region where our interests have aligned since the end of the Cold War: the Arctic?
