The just completed World Cup was an amazing event.  Along with the Olympics it is the truly global sporting event.  I would venture to say that in the 32 countries that had teams in the Cup the ratings and awareness of the games was much greater than for the Olympics.  In those countries, hundreds and thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of people came together in public places to watch their teams, cheering or moaning as one.

I realized that eight years ago, in the early months of this blog, I had written a column about the 2006 World …

The politically delayed confirmation of Chuck Hagel to become the Secretary of Defense could well be a pivot point, and an essential one, for the future of the Department.  It is time for this most important arm of the government to become more aligned with 21^st century realities.

Much of the thinking in the United States, and particularly in Washington D.C., is what I call legacy thinking.  We have powered into the 21^st century thinking thoughts from the 20^th century.  Certainly if one is over 40 much of what one thinks was shaped in the last century.  If you first developed …

Congratulations to Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  Congratulations to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for sharing in that prize. There could be no better recipients for the Peace Prize than the man who, more than anyone else has raised the awareness of global warming, and for the international body of scientists that, finally, lifted the dialogue about global warming out of the world of opinion and into the world of science.

 Regular readers know that I have often written …