http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/Thoughts and comments from a moderate Democrat. hourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/628149THE OBAMA administration has chosen to support international negotiations with Iran next month in spite of Tehran's declarations that it will not discuss its nuclear program. The White House says the United States and its five partners will insist on raising the U.N. Security Council's demand for...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/627420"THE TIME for bickering is over," President Obama declared Wednesday night. Perhaps that will work better on members of Congress than it does in some families of our acquaintance, but we have our doubts. Mr. Obama spoke Wednesday night to a nation skeptical of his health-care plans and a Congress...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/626534LAST MONTH we expected that Afghanistan's elections would mark a modest step forward for the country. Now it appears that they could be a major reverse. Though the election campaign was positive in many respects, Election Day itself is emerging as a disaster of relatively low turnout and massive...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/625818PRESIDENT OBAMA reportedly has a hefty reading list while vacationing this week, but I would like to offer two additions, both hot off the presses. One is an article by the education expert who studied the D.C. voucher program; the second is a study on school safety in the city's public and...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/625745TED KENNEDY once said that his own legislative record was one he'd love to run against. A number of people tried, of course, and lost. But then, they weren't Ted Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy spent 46 years in the Senate hewing pretty steadily to his course while others trimmed their sails or just plain...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/623350AT 3:15 P.M. Thursday, Aug. 6, the nation witnessed the confirmation of its first Hispanic justice to the Supreme Court. By a vote of 68 to 31, Sonia Maria Sotomayor, daughter of the Bronx and Puerto Rico, became the 111th person and only the third woman to join the highest court in the land. The...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/622552WHEN THE Colombian government last year unveiled extensive evidence that the government of Venezuela had collaborated with a Colombian rebel movement known for terrorism and drug trafficking, other Latin American governments and the United States mostly chose to look the other way. The evidence...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/622434ONE OF THE MORE striking results of the Obama administration's first six months is that only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel. The new administration has pushed a reset button with Russia and sent new ambassadors to Syria and Venezuela; it has...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/622032IN APRIL, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. declared that it "would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department." He was speaking, of course, of CIA operatives and other government interrogators...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/davideskin/621647THE FEDERAL Reserve Board's independence is a bit like the judiciary's independence. Absolutely vital for the institution's proper functioning, it nevertheless depends on Congress and the president to respect decisions with which they disagree. In such cases, the best protection for either the...