The administration is continuing to pursue an agenda of military engagement in the middle east, while the Republicans are talking about balancing the budget by cutting back on spending at home, ranging from education to infrastructure to medical care and social security. Neither of these are the right agenda. The right agenda is to quit trying to pay off Pakistan and get out, to leave Iraq, to leave our bases in the rest of the middle east, and to pull out of Afghanistan. The whole enterprise is a waste of American treasure. And where will our departure leade? It will undercut the whole message of the Muslim extremists and open the door for the young people of the region to do what they have been longing to do from the beginning: embrace western values.read more

Anne and I have just come back from a month-long driving trip to my home state of Texas, and I have never been so terrified in my life. From what we experienced in Texas, the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords today in Arizona doesn’t surprise me at all. The atmosphere was completely different from the way it was when we lived there between 1994 and 2005, and light years from what it was when I grew up there.
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