Libyan opposition leaders rule out major role for foreign peacekeepers; U.N. shifts planning

Libya?s opposition leaders have ruled out any major role for foreign peacekeepers in the country after the fall of Moammar Gaddafi, insisting that a new transitional government will take the lead in establishing security, according to top U.N. officials.

The decision, which has been detailed in high-level talks involving representatives of the Transitional National Council, U.N. officials and foreign governments over the past week, reflects the opposition?s growing confidence in its ability to manage any security vacuum in the country.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=b09a2438914dd9f03805c04f736ff674

new religion politics

Why did CNN buy the news aggregator Zite?

What's a news producer going to do with an aggregation service? Do the business models mesh?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/tcoc/~3/w3AVDwRhGMY/

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An interview with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos came well prepared for the job: Previously, he served as his country?s finance minister, foreign trade minister and, most recently, defense minister under his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe. But while Uribe centered Colombia?s foreign policy around an alliance with the United States, Santos has maintained good relations with Washington yet also kept some distance, becoming more of an independent player in Latin America. Santos, who has been in office slightly more than one year and enjoys a strong domestic approval rating of 71 percent, sat down last week with Washington Post senior associate editor Lally Weymouth in Bogota. Excerpts of their conversation:

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Rick Perry is no libertarian

A s my Post colleague Perry Bacon reported in detail this week, Rick Perry has jettisoned the ?compassion? that sometimes leavened the conservatism of his predecessor in the Texas governor?s mansion.

If Perry?s style resembles anybody?s in George W. Bush?s White House, in fact, it is that of former vice president Dick Cheney, whose just-published memoir, ?In My Time,? might as well have been titled ?Right Every Time (Even Though I Was Surrounded by Idiots).? Think of Perry as Bush without the charm.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=653a0635a466ff809a8b457575087cae

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Quick spin: ?The Rip Tide,? by Beirut

�Neither a leap forward nor a troubling stagnation, ?The Rip Tide,? the third full-length album from Beirut, is a solidifying of the band?s unique blend of influences. Leader Zach Condon gently de-emphasizes the Eastern European and Gypsy folk strains that were dominant on previous recordings and pulls forward a sweeping pop melancholia.

The album?s charms are encapsulated in the lead single, ?East Harlem,? which sways gracefully atop a framework of martial bass drum and piano. But it?s the song?s instantly resonating hook and Condon?s wistful vocal that define it ? and sets down a signature that the record?s eight other songs echo in some form.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=e3e9e2cb86bf706c6680a25cd5310d1e

new religion politics

Romney, Perry criticize Obama?s foreign policy as weak

MINNEAPOLIS ? In a series of speeches, President Obama and his chief political rivals have presented dueling assessments of the administration?s record abroad, with Republicans offering an ominous view of a weak and uncertain America under Obama?s leadership.

The clashing visions, which emerged in speeches Tuesday from Obama and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney before gatherings of military veterans, highlighted what is sure to be a sharp point of contention during the 2012 campaign.

While both sides agree that the economy remains unhealthy, even as they debate what to do about it, there is disagreement over America?s standing in the world after a decade of war.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=f81bf888bdf451224ab3e1f79a578498

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Retirees fastest-growing users of social networks

Retirees age 65 and older are the fastest-growing group of social networking site users like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, according to a new Pew Research Center survey . And for the first time this ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/retirees-fastest-growing-users-social-170907190.html

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King, in word and stone

It is one of the enduring mysteries of American history ? so near-providential as to give the most hardened atheist pause ? that it should have produced, at every hinge point, great men who matched the moment. A roiling, revolutionary 18th-century British colony gives birth to the greatest cohort of political thinkers ever: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Franklin, Jay. The crisis of the 19th century brings forth Lincoln; the 20th, FDR.

Equally miraculous is Martin Luther King Jr. Black America?s righteous revolt against a century of post-emancipation oppression could have gone in many bitter and destructive directions. It did not. This was largely the work of one man?s leadership, moral imagination and strategic genius. He turned his own deeply Christian belief that ?unearned suffering is redemptive? into a creed of nonviolence that he carved into America?s political consciousness. The result was not just racial liberation but national redemption.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=226773718038cc1294ead415d8dee305

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Jonathan Bernstein: Going to war with Al Gore?

Good August topic: Steve Kornacki argues that Al Gore would have gone to war with Iraq had he defeated George W. Bush in the 2000 election. I think that?s absolutely wrong.

Kornacki makes several good points: that Gore?s earlier history in the Senate was hawkish; that he would have at least some Iraq hawks close to him, including his VP, Joe Lieberman; and that Saddam Hussein was highly unpopular in the U.S. What I?d add to that is that the one thing that can be said for invasion, even now, is that the status quo in Iraq was in fact far from ideal for the U.S.

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When it?s in our interest to intervene

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt named an obscure history professor, William E. Dodd, as ambassador to Germany. Dodd was a principled but prosaic man, whose gift to popular history was not his academic writings but the scandalous behavior of his attractive daughter. In Berlin, she slept with the enemy ? neither for God nor country but for the sheer fun of it.

It took the older Dodd just a brief time and Martha Dodd, his 25-year-old daughter, much longer to figure out that they were dealing not with the sort of country club anti-Semites they knew back in the States but with killers intent on wiping out a whole people. ?We sort of don?t like the Jews anyway,? Martha told a friend. Lucky for her she was in the right country.

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Is political mudslinging worse today?

Okay, it?s nasty out there. And it?ll only get nastier as we head toward next year?s elections. But, really, is American political mudslinging any worse now than it has ever been?

To consider the question, I dipped into Rosemarie Ostler?s new book, ?Slinging Mud: Rude Nicknames, Scurrilous Slogans, and Insulting Slang from Two Centuries of American Politics,? out next month from Perigee (paper, $13.95).

The book isn?t just a compendium of vile barbs but rather a history of unattractive political discourse. Ostler gives us the good lines but also puts them in historical context and digs out fascinating bits about their origins.

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Japan elects new PM, may be ruling party's last chance

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's parliament on Tuesday voted in a new prime minister who represents perhaps the last, best chance for the ruling Democratic Party to begin pulling the country out of decades of stagnation.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japan-pm-noda-faces-party-feud-split-parliament-032811233.html

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?1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created,? by Charles C. Mann

We?ve all heard stories about lottery winners who squander their newfound wealth, go on misguided adventures, become addicted to expensive substances, and wind up poorer and unhappier than they ever were before fortune found them.

In the rush to claim the Americas following Christopher Columbus?s arrival in 1492, Spain wound up with the winning Powerball number. And that prize, writes journalist and historian Charles C. Mann in his new book, ?1493,? ?threw Spain?s elite into delirium.? The country?s rulers launched wars against the mighty Ottoman Empire and other Muslim powers, to say nothing of fellow Christians elsewhere in Europe. The wealth from the newfound silver mines of Potosi didn?t begin to cover the bill, so the Spanish crown borrowed from foreign powers and banks, mortgaging the country?s future and amassing vast debts. The rich worked out tax exemptions and retreated behind the walls of their villas, while the small middle class and peasantry shouldered the burden, the latter struggling to grow food in the face of a worsening climate.

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=3ff0f14609b0954665b37790bf682d1b

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Big 12 details exit strategy upon Aggies' request

The New York Times is reporting Texas A&M has notified the Big 12 it will withdraw from the conference.

Source: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/6907754/big-12-outlines-texas-requirements-exit-conference

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The MTV Video Music Awards: This year?s most tasteless moments

As previously established in Celebritology, the MTV Video Music Awards have a tendency to get a little tasteless. Or, to put it another way, they often revel in the ?controversial,? profane and/or generally tacky moments that typically generate conversation on Twitter and around the office coffee maker.

This year, the VMAs actually got classy a couple of times (see Adele, Bruno Mars?s tribute to Amy Winehouse). They got awkward on more than a few occasions, as Click Track previously and hilariously acknowledged. (Seriously, what does it take to make Justin Bieber stop looking so freaking nonplussed? Aren?t you the guy who sings ?U Smile, I Smile??)

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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=c4d9cfa6554363776866040ba3dab173

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Perry and Bachmann have made conflicting statements on gay marriage

The tea party has backed Republicans into a corner when it comes to states? rights and gay marriage.

The clash is between two converging branches of the conservative movement: the social conservatives who wants to outlaw gay marriage at all costs, and the newly in vogue brand of tea party federalists holding that, regardless of how you feel about the controversial issue, it?s a matter for the states.

Already, 2012 presidential contenders and tea-party favorites Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) have essentially taken both sides ? supporting the idea that states should have the right to decide the issue but also backing a federal amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. That amendment, of course, would effectively take the issue out of the states? hands, so it?s hard to marry (no pun intended) the two positions.

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