Government still throwing vast taxpayer sums at Blackwater

It’s like they’re in a strip club, according to Jeff Stein:

The Central Intelligence Agency has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to an

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Kerry on McChrystal flap: Stop the ‘feeding frenzy’

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the people Gen. Stanley McChrystal dissed to Rolling Stone, issued this statement that you could read as neither supporting nor opposing McChrystal.

When General McChrystal

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McChrystal apologizes for insulting Obama team

A not-yet-released Rolling Stone magazine profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, quotes him and anonymous aides expressing anger, disrespect and derision at various members of the Obama administration, including Vice President Biden, Amb. Richard…

Making Muslims justify their Americanness

Being asked just because you’re Muslim to prove you don’t support Hezbollah is as hopeless as being asked just because you wear sleeveless t-shirts to prove you don’t beat your wife. The Muslim bit is more offense and tragic because…

Military chiefs oppose ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ compromise

In a setback for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) and Senate Armed Services Committee supporters like Colorado’s Mark Udall, efforts to insert amendments overturning the military’s ban on open gay service in this year’s defense authorization bill…

White House to unveil ‘grand strategy’ on national security

John Brennan has a tough rhetorical job ahead of him Wednesday morning. Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Brennan, President Obama’s most influential terrorism and intelligence adviser, will attempt to reconcile the harder edges of Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan and his enthusiastic embrace of drone-enabled assassinations of terrorists with the broader approach to grand strategy that the White House will finally unveil this week. Some wonder if that reconciliation is even possible.

LGBT groups gear up for today’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal fight

The Senate Armed Services Committee goes into room 222 of the Russell building today at 2:30 p.m. to mark up the fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill. Until members emerge at 9 p.m., it’s a black box of information for determining the contours of the half-trillion-dollar-plus piece of legislation, including the fate of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) amendment to repeal the military’s ban on open gay service, an amendment strongly supported by Colorado’s Mark Udall. The coalition of LGBT-rights organizations pushing to secure passage in the committee and then later this week on the House floor are trying as hard as they can to lock down votes by mid-afternoon before the Senators gather behind closed doors.

Udall push to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ wins nod from Obama

In the culmination of Monday’s big push among activists and key members of the Senate Armed Service Committee to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”– a group that included Colorado’s Sen. Mark Udall– White House budget director Peter Orszag wrote…

Obama nominee Kagan has embraced expanded executive authority

Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be President Obama’s second Supreme Court nominee. The emerging conventional wisdom is that Kagan, a rare nominee for the high court who hasn’t been a judge, is a very smart blank slate. On at least one category of issues that Kagan will face — the intersection of national security and law during a time of war — that conventional wisdom looks correct. But there’s a proxy for that set of issues, however inexact, that offers a few clues in advance of her confirmation hearings: Kagan’s deference to executive power.

Number of military gays fired in 2009 dips to record low 443

That statistic comes to you from Servicemembers United, which opposes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and seeks its repeal. It’s lower than in previous years: There were 627 such discharges in 2007, for instance. From a Servicemembers United press release:…