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The Roosevelt Institute recently celebrated the anniversary of the birth of President Franklin Roosevelt. In this post on the Institute’s website, Senior Fellow David Woolner reviews some of FDR’s …

President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address to Congress last night before facing the voters in November. Although the speech was primarily concerned with economic matters and his efforts to build an “economy built to last,” it also contained …

Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia all are using their considerable web presence today to protest legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. According to the Google announcement:
Two bills before …

For the second time in days the U.S. Navy has saved Iranian fishermen. As you will recall, it was earlier this month that the Navy rescued Iranian fishermen being held by Somali pirates. That incident came amid rising tensions and threats from Iran that it would …

The U.S. formally ended the Iraq War today. As The New York Times reports:
Almost nine years after the first American tanks began massing on the Iraq border, the Pentagon declared an official end to …

The Foreign Policy Association has asked the blog team to write year-end summaries and even provided a nice little template for us to follow. So, without further ado:
Summary of the Past Year
What an extraordinary year 2011 has turned out to be. The U.S. appears to have …

The Congressional supercommittee charged with finding trillions of dollars in debt reduction has failed in their mission, opening the door to a drastic reduction in the U.S. federal …

I’ve been considering a post titled “Late-Blogging the GOP Debate.” I’m using the term late-blogging as opposed to live-blogging. I wasn’t able to watch the foreign policy debate over the weekend and had it saved on my DVR for later viewing. I’m not really sure anyone …

A Russian spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, taking NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin on a mission to the International Space Station. This marks the start of the U.S. tag-along space policy in which U.S. access …

The U.S. is taking time off today to honor veterans. The Veterans Day holiday is a time to give thanks and to pause and recognize the contributions of the more than 23 million veterans who served our country. The day is also observed all over the …

President Obama took a break this week from Washington D.C. drama to attend the G20 summit in France. As you can imagine, most of the debate at the summit had to do with the European debt crisis. Given that focus, it was not a summit at …

If you have followed this blog for a while you may have noticed a few posts on the subject of U.S. foreign aid (most recently: here ,

As Libyans celebrate the end of almost 42 years of dictatorial rule by Muammar al-Qaddafi you may be wondering what role the U.S. played in the dramatic final hours of Qaddafi’s life. According to most reports, as the fall of Sirte became certain, Qaddafi fled in …

As you may have heard, Steve Jobs lost his battle with cancer today. Much will be written about the life and legacy of this amazing man over the next few days and I expect his death will echo and reverberate in our media and social networks …

An article in yesterday’s New York Times caught my attention. It concerns the U.S. budget for foreign aid programs and long-time readers will know this is a subject we discuss here from time to time. Most recently I mentioned it in a