The Washington Times

There’s an important election next Sunday, one that may make a significant difference not only to the prospects for consolidating a democratic transition, but also to regional peace, security and stability, and to the question of whether “Europe whole and free” still has meaning after the failure of the EU Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands. It’s in Albania. That’s right, Albania.

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The Washington Times

Anyone who has spent much time around the United Nations, as I have over the past six months in conjunction with the Gingrich-Mitchell task force on U.N. reform and under the auspices of the U.S. Institute of Peace, has probably come to realize that vantage point is everything when assessing this strange and ungainly animal on Turtle Bay.

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About that supposed smoking-gun memo.

View this article at The Weekly Standard

AS LEAKED GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS GO, the “Downing Street Memo” is pretty sexy. Not actually a memo but the official notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting in the British prime minister’s office, the document reproduces the thoughts and concerns about Iraq of Tony Blair and his key advisers, including his foreign and defense secretaries, his attorney general, and “C”–code for Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, recently returned from high-level meetings in Washington. Rarely do you find an open window on such a high-level discussion, especially on a matter that will take a country to war a scant nine months later.

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The Washington Times

It is beginning to dawn on Democrats that the compromise in the Senate that averted the “nuclear option” over judges was not the victory they thought it was. Republicans, meanwhile, are beginning to come to terms with what it means to get not half a loaf, but I’d say three-quarters to seven-eighths, rather than the whole.

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The Washington Times

The European Constitutional Treaty, which French voters recently rejected solidly and Dutch voters overwhelmingly, is a truly unlovely document. But the project underlying it is not. And while the treaty is, in effect, a dead letter now, reports of the demise of European integration are greatly exaggerated.

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