During his mid-month visit to Denver, Yossi Klein Halevi also dropped by the Rocky to meet with the editorial board. I’m glad that I taped that meeting, since Halevi — a contributing editor at The New Republic, veteran journalist and author, and senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem — is a one-man road map, so to speak, for Americans trying to understand the political dynamic in the Middle East. The focus of our conversation, though, was Iran, and Halevi’s keen insight into the brewing conflict with the Islamic Republic is something that everyone should digest.

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So last time I wrote about Boulder, it was in defense of naked pumpkin-headed people running down the Pearl Street Mall. But last night I drove up there, when the streets were indeed fully clothed, to catch the Colorado stop of the national tour “Separate Is Never Equal: Stories of Apartheid from South Africa to Palestine,” presented by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and hosted by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center on the University of Colorado campus (yes, the onetime home of Ward Churchill himself!). This isn’t exactly my idea of an enjoyable Monday evening, but I’d gotten wind that members of the Israeli student group planned to show up, listen respectfully to the speakers (which they did), and then ask hard-hitting questions during the Q&A (which they also did).

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Call Kathleen Parker my new sister-in-arms: When Sarah Palin went to the U.N. this week to meet her first world leaders (sorry, I’m already cringing), the no-reporters-allowed controversy was clearly intended to shield the VP nominee from likely gaffes. Kathleen Parker writes on JWR today that it was fun while it lasted, but Palin has shown that she’s clearly out of her league. Now, in the eyes of Freepers and other conservative faithful, she’s suddenly a plant for the left hellbent on sabotage. Never mind where she’s really coming from: She wants McCain to win and doesn’t think this is the ticket.

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Today in my Rocky Mountain News column, I address the latest sideshow in this three-ring circus of an election: A number of pro-choicers who don’t support the notion that Feminists for Life member Sarah Palin could choose to be against abortion thought it would be a stroke of clever irony to make donations to Planned Parenthood in her name, including the address of the McCain campaign so that Planned Parenthood would send Palin a card to let her in on the joke, basically. Call this “fiendish� stroke of “brilliance� immature at best, and incredibly callous at worst. Regardless, it takes another whack at the rapidly deteriorating level of political discourse this election season.

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The Sunday, Sept. 14, edition of The Denver Post was among dozens of newspapers nationwide that included a copy of the DVD “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” as a paid advertising supplement, drawing complaints in a Post article yesterday that called the documentary “anti-Muslim hate speech” and “hateful information on Islam.” The Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina had refused to carry the DVD at all, saying it was “divisive and plays on people’s fears and served no educational purpose.” Editor & Publisher cynically observed that the newspaper buys were in swing states, and questioned the New York Times about its policy on such inserts: “We believe the broad principles of freedom of the press confer on us an obligation to keep our advertising columns as open as possible. Therefore our acceptance or rejection of an advertisement does not depend on whether it coincides with our editorial positions,” replied the NYT. The advertising buy, by the way, coincided with the film’s Sept. 11 wide release in major retailers.

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OK, so I’ve been AWOL from this site for a while: It’s because I packed up and left L.A. to take a primo job offer at the Rocky Mountain News, just in time for the DNC (where, yes, I protest crashed and caught a nice whiff of pepper spray). And last week’s Kadima elections — plus rumors of a power-sharing deal being brokered between Labor and Likud with the cooperation of Shas — provided perfect material for my Rocky column yesterday. I really think that Kadima is *this close* to getting the rug pulled out from under it.

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I’ve had Kuwait’s back ever since I was 15 years old. Bad boy Saddam Hussein had just invaded Iraq’s tiny, oil-rich neighbor, and before too long the Gulf War was on. Promptly, my high school campus turned into an emirate lovefest: We scribbled “Free Kuwait!” (and, er, “Saddam Sucks!”) on our book covers and binders, and some enterprising students even printed buttons for our backpacks. Since expanding my horizons past the point of rudimentary 10th-grade knapsack foreign-policy advocacy, I’ve still always supported the decision to liberate Kuwait. Now if only Kuwait would liberate itself.

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Or at least that’s how I sound in this interview I gave for a profile in Nielson Business Media: “To be in this business, you have to just love the news to the point where you don’t mind working weekends, holidays, nights, overtime; and you don’t mind dropping everything when a story happens. … You have to be the person who will do the editorial equivalent of walking to school three miles in the snow barefoot. You have to put the news and the newsroom first.”

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Former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko is running for mayor of Kiev, and the May 25 vote is swiftly approaching! I recently got a one-on-one interview with the boxer from the campaign trail, and wrote about it in my Los Angeles Daily News column. I have a feeling PM readers will find him to be much more than a pugilist — having grown up in the Soviet Union, he’s committed to bringing real democracy sans corruption to the Ukraine, and his model is the West: “I see the life standards in the U.S. and what we have to bring here to Ukraine People want to be part of the modern world. It’s one point to speak, another point to be.”

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As Israel nears her 60th birthday, this is major food for thought: Hamas airs a “documentary” showing that Jews supposedly plotted the Holocaust to weed out the weak and gain international sympathy. They release it just a couple of weeks before the day when the world remembered the victims of the Holocaust. The media largely ignores this outrage, because Hamas represents the “persecuted” Palestinians. I write about the lessons we need to learn from this — with the insight of my pal Valerie Harper, who took her amazing Golda Meir character to the big screen recently — in my Los Angeles Daily News column this week:

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There’s a line in “Pulp Fiction” where Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Jules, has a “moment of clarity” after several short-range bullets miss him: He decides to quit the hitman career, finally start living the Ezekiel passage he quoted to victims about the path of righteousness being beset on all sides by evil men, and even though totally unsure of his future he tells Vincent Vega (John Travolta) “I can’t go back to sleep.” After this week’s protests against the Olympic torch in San Francisco, one can’t help but think — and hope — that many spectators now have that feeling about the myriad grievances brought against China: Tibet, the PRC’s support for Sudan and Burma, press freedom (or lack of it, as the situation is), even the crackdowns on China’s Uighur community (which showed up waving Eastern Turkistan flags). Media reports tend to leap to the loony protesters — like the trio of nude guys I interviewed (and photographed, providing a scary surprise for my mother in her e-mail) — but a strong message was sent by a passionate mass of protesters who generally heeded the call for nonviolence yet blocked the path for the torch to enter the closing ceremonies.

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Lots of interesting reaction — including my first Chinese death threat! — to my Los Angeles Daily News column this week on China’s game-playing (and we’re not talking about the traditional Olympic variety).

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Plenty of countries claim up and down that they don’t hold political prisoners, and those eager to do business with that country are usually too eager to buy their story. But a recently leaked copy of a secret politburo document should leave everyone with little doubt that not only does Vietnam persecute political prisoners; they’re worried about learning to persecute more efficiently so they’ll catch less flack from the international community.

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The Olympic torch run is set to pass through San Francisco — its only U.S. stop — on April 9. Now, Mayor Gavin Newsom refused to even listen to human-rights advocates who said that welcoming this tainted torch in the city stands against SF’s liberal traditions. And now, he’s trying to corral protesters into designated “free-speech areas” — out of sight of the torch path so as not to offend the delicate Chinese government. Which, as I’ve been told, thousands of protesters may not take kindly.The weekend’s tragic, bloody crackdown on freedom-seeking Tibetans in Lhasa should make everyone angry — and should stress the need to hold China’s feet to the fire. Mark your calendar for a pre-torch rally at UN Plaza in San Fran on April 8, followed by march to the Chinese consulate and candlelight vigil that evening; then on April 9 the torch run is expected to go through the financial district, where tens of thousands of protesters are expected to gather. I’ll be there, and I hope many proud, human-rights-loving Americans can make it!!

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How often do politicos get such golden advice for free? My McCain Victory Strategy begins last Friday, when Mac met behind closed doors at the Council for National Policy with - and I say this as a lifelong Republican - some of the right-wingerest of right-wingers in a pre-election kiss-up. We continue in my Los Angeles Daily News column today:

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So over the weekend Mirwaiz Omar Farooq — the 15th hereditary leader of Kashmir’s Muslims — was in town to speak at a luncheon held in his honor at the Pakistani consul general’s abode. I was there (and thank goodness, because Pakistani food is delish) as the mirwaiz talked about his Hurriyat coalition’s desire for a peaceful, equitable solution to the Kashmiri issue.

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The secular Muslim world is finding itself in a real knot - and in Turkey, it has everything to do with a piece of cloth tied under a woman’s chin. Lawmakers from the ruling Islamist party and their allies have voted to actually amend Turkey’s constitution to allow the wearing of the Islamic head scarf in universities. Now a piece of cloth threatens to divide the country, as scores hold fast to the secularism on which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the republic.

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Why did Romney get whupped so badly? It was the KFC! Well, perhaps at least in part, if you look back at Mike Huckabee’s uncanny prediction from around the time of the Florida primary. You may remember that Mitt decided to be like real people and eat at a KFC even though his handlers wanted him to stop at Chili’s; after ordering a combo, Romney peeled off the skin and secret-recipe breading, then daintily ate the fried chicken with a plastic knife and fork. A Huck supporter caught video of the former Arkansas governor responding to the KFC faux pas, and Huck compared it to Gerald Ford’s tamale-construction ignorance. But Huckabee also joked that because of Mitt’s KFC faux pas, Huck would win “Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma.” As we all know now, he won four of the five.

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It all boils down to this question: Is there room left in the GOP for moderates or moderate-right-wingers? I’ve always maintained that there definitely is, particularly as “independent” or “decline to state” registrations grow. But if you’d heard a conservative pundit lately, you’d think that the Republican Party was set to implode unless every GOPer hops on the bandwagon and votes how they say. So today, going into Super Tuesday, I had to write about the swinging and jabbing Angry Right for my Los Angeles Daily News column:

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It’s easy to just focus on campaign news this week, but a journalist in Afghanistan needs help. Sentenced to die for distributing to classmates — not even writing, mind you — an article that asked why, if Muslim men could have four wives, women didn’t have the same right. This, according to a mullah court in Mazar-e-Sharif, is blasphemy for which Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh should die. Read more about the case and what you can do to help here.

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In thinking about when this primary season is over, I’ve wondered if some of the debates fought and attitudes expressed will find new footing — like the non-interventionist foreign policy from the candidate who inspires the most loyal Technorati hunters. In my Los Angeles Daily News column today, I sit down with Eran Lerman, Israel/Middle East director for the American Jewish Committee, a super-smart and funny guy whose comments on such policy really, really need to be heard.

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

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Yesterday in my Los Angeles Daily News column I analyzed how Iran could benefit from their high-seas provocations — namely, at our ballot boxes. More:

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Since Mitt Romney has developed verbal diarrhea with this phrase, claiming that a “Washington insider” can’t change Washington, it’s gotten me thinking. What is wrong with a president who knows the innermost workings of the Washington machine inside and out?

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With each election we’re told that the younger voters will become more and more powerful (”Rock the Vote,” “Vote or Die,” etc.). However, there’s no guarantee that it will be deep, meaningful or informed, as in these two examples today:

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The folks at Green Mountain Politics, aka Monday Morning Clacker, have been reporting on the New Hampshire primary from a home base in Manchester, N.H., since October ‘06. Today they have up this disquieting video (to quote the Concord Monitor’s description of Romney!) of folks pulling out McCain signs and replacing them with Romney ones — as a couple of news cameras watch. GMP believes the girl in the video is a Romney staffer.

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And at times it was utterly shameless:

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Yes, the United Nations has partnered with Marvel to produce a comic book that shows classic characters such as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four fighting alongside blue-hatted peacekeepers and humanitarian workers. Poor, hapless schoolchildren will then receive the superhero rag. In my Los Angeles Daily News column this week, I decided to offer up a script for the comic:

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At first, I was wary of Mike Huckabee’s foreign policy prowess (or lack of it). Now, I just want to cry. First he didn’t know what the NIE on Iran’s nuclear program was about. Then he thought Pakistan was still under martial law. I mean, turning the assassination of Benazir Bhutto into an illegal-immigration stump was just disastrous: 

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So what’s gonna happen in 2008? I make some semi-brilliant predictions in my Los Angeles Daily News/New York Times News Service column today:

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My Los Angeles Daily News column today is one that I had to write. In light of all the recent arguments about how much a candidate’s religion should figure into Campaign 2008, I’ve been thinking more about the endorsements from questionable religious leaders. Like Pat Robertson endorsing Giuliani, and Giuliani standing on a stage beaming with, accepting the endorsement of, a man who’s said some pretty unsavory things in the guise of religious leadership:

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It’s campaign time — for the title of Grande Conservative Blogress Diva 2008, that is!! Yes, I’m on the ballot over at Gay Patriot, where the Blogress Diva is sort of the political equivalent of Cher. So I’m humbly asking for your vote. My platform:

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Continuing with my conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad, my Los Angeles Daily News column today focuses on the Iranian question and the fallout from the NIE:

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More of my sit-down with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad at Pajamas Media today, this part focused on the crisis in Lebanon: Q: Is Security Council Resolution 1701 working? Is Hezbollah rearming? Are they more powerful in spite of it?

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Yesterday I sat down with our ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, hours before he addressed the Los Angeles World Affairs Council at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City. Afghan-born Khalilzad, the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration and a name often mentioned as a secretary of state candidate should a Republican win in 2008, was really friendly and opened up on a variety of subjects. In today’s L.A. Daily News, I write about U.S. plans for a third set of sanctions against Iran — NIE or no NIE:

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