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Remarks of Senator Barack Obama“A More Perfect Union”Constitution CenterPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania First the video, then the text of the speech, below: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these […]

The Pakistani parliament convened on Monday for the first time since the February 18 elections, with the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muslim League-N and their allies having a two-thirds majority in the lower house. They have indicated that they will seek to reinstate the Supreme Court and dozens of judges dismissed by dictator Pervez […]

At the Napoleon’s Egypt blog, Gen. Berthier describes how the French, having failed to take the fortress at Acre, destroy the city’s aqueduct in revenge and then pillage and loot the Palestinian countryside. Word arrives to Gen. Bonaparte from Cairo that during his absence, popular uprisings have broken out in Sharqiyyah and Buhayra Provinces. (The […]

Pakistan People’s Party leader Asaf Ali Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Nawaz Sharif reached a historic accord on Sunday aimed at forming a coalition government. The PPP will lead the government and choose the cabinet ministers, in consultation with its partners, but PMLN officials will also serve in the cabinet. They were joined by […]

Congressman Steven King of Iowa, who has decided to further disgrace Congress by seeking a fifth term there, delivered himself of the sort of bigotted and ignorant comments about Barack Obama that we have come to expect from the rightwing Republicans who have made such a mess of our economy and of the world. King […]

In the miserable Israeli-Palestinian Hundred Years War, there were several pieces of worse than usual news lately. David Rose at Vanity Fair showed that the Bush administration tried to provoke a Palestinian civil war and a coup by the PLO against the elected Hamas government. Those plans went awry, leaving Hamas more powerful than ever. […]

The Iraqi civilian death toll was up 33% in February over January. AFP says, “The combined figures from the interior, defence and health ministries showed that the total number of Iraqis killed in February was 721, including 636 civilians, compared with 541 dead in January.” Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Baghdad on Sunday […]

I was surprised that the writers of comments over at Salon.com did not know the below. It is common knowledge to anyone interested in genealogy. I know that it is hard for people invested in a hard East/ West dichotomy to imagine that the icon of Western civilization, the British royal family, has Arab Muslim […]

So first came the question posed by Tim Russert and Barack Obama’s answer in Tuesday evening’s debate in Cleveland, which went like this according to the official transcript: ‘ MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in […]