CASS

Release of the so-called Nunes Memo that challenged the integrity and objectivity of the FBI in securing a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to investigate Carter Page has erupted into a political firestorm and earthquake of at least 10 on the Richter scale. The tragedy is that this memo is further and redundant evidence of a government that is badly broken. Shame on both Republicans and Democrats who have wielded this memo as a blunt instrument to bludgeon the other side. The memo itself would receive a failing grade if it were submitted as a paper in any respectable law or graduate school. It asserts much and [...]

GENEVA -- Before the Trumpian tirades about "shitholes," his good relationship with Kim Jong "Little Rocket Man" Un and the waste of money in moving the U.S. Embassy in London from its lofty presence in Grosvenor Square to a largely inaccessible new location south of the Thames, I was going to focus on perhaps the thorniest strategic dilemma of the 21st century: the de-linkage between political and military deterrence. Because the 20th century was defined by largely binary conflicts -- allies versus the central powers in WW I; allies versus the axis in WW II; east versus west in the Cold War and strategic nuclear deterrence -- it was assumed [...]