Charles Homans considers “The Last Secrets of the Bush Administration” in the latest Washington Monthly. “An accounting of the Bush years is a less daunting prospect than it seems from the outset,” he says. “If the new president and leaders on Capitol Hill act shrewdly, they can pull it off while successfully navigating the political realities and expectations they now face. A few key actions will take us much of the distance between what we know and what we need to know.”
A review of the White House website reveals unacknowledged modifications to White House press releases and suggests an unwholesome willingness to distort the public record, the authors of a recent study contend. See “History Reloaded: Changing The Past To Suit The Present” by Thomas Claburn, Information Week, November 26.
“President-elect Barack Obama’s top pick to head the CIA blamed his sudden withdrawal from consideration on critics who blamed him for harsh Bush administration policies on interrogations, detentions and secret renditions.” See “Potential CIA chief cites critics in ending bid” by Pamela Hess, Associated Press, November 26.
“The next White House Web site should tell us a lot about whether Obama believes what he has said about bringing transparency and accountability to the government,” writes Dan Froomkin in the Nieman Watchdog. See “It’s time for a Wiki White House,” November 25.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.
Recognizing the power of the national transportation infrastructure expert community and its distributed expertise, ARPA-I took a different route that would instead bring the full collective brainpower to bear around appropriately ambitious ideas.
NIH needs to seriously invest in both the infrastructure and funding to undertake rigorous nutrition clinical trials, so that we can rapidly improve food and make progress on obesity.