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...More important than any change in attitudes at Harvard, however, is the fact that the federal government might soon allow gay individuals to serve in the military openly, a movement that has gathered strength after reports that specialists in high-demand languages like Arabic and Farsi have been discharged for being gay. President Obama has said that he will push Congress to repeal the law, noting that the British armed forces have integrated their ranks without incident. Such a change in policy would strip Harvard of its basis for opposing the military’s presence on campus. Since most...
...terms of actual voting, the Democrats are still short of their 60-vote majority, given that Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd are on indefinite medical leave and are only likely to return for the most important votes. Not to mention the fact that governing the Senate, as former majority leader Trent Lott once put it, is like herding cats. The Dems have such a wide umbrella that finding issues that unite both ends of the 60-vote spectrum can be tough...
...Privately, Obama Administration officials acknowledge that Washington's own influence inside the OAS has shrunk since the Cold War, despite the fact that the U.S. is still the group's No. 1 financial backer, and they concede that the OAS could vote this week to readmit Cuba without U.S. approval, though it would be rare for the organization not to forge a consensus on the matter first. (New Jersey's Cuban-American Senator Bob Menendez has threatened to cut off U.S. funding to the OAS if it lifts the suspension.) Still, "the OAS's historic journey to become a region...
...than did his predecessor. But this has not gone down well with Netanyahu's hawkish Cabinet, which is grumbling in the Israeli press that Obama has gone too far the other way, supposedly granting concessions to Palestinians that are "unfair" to Israelis. The Israeli press made much of the fact that Obama's meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington last week seemed much more cordial than Obama's strained encounter earlier with Netanyahu. A cartoon in the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth showed Obama and Abbas laughing chummily while throwing darts at Netanyahu's portrait...
...Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, a moderate socialist and former Chilean foreign minister nicknamed El Panzer for his tanklike drive, has actually strengthened the OAS's influence since being elected secretary-general in 2005 - the first winning candidate, in fact, who wasn't regarded as "Washington's man." Last year, for example, he played a key role in quieting war drums in the Andes when a crisis broke out among Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela over leftist guerrillas and territorial sovereignty. But he also took heat last fall for what critics called an all too OAS-like soft response...