Theory

The Targeting of Corporate Executives

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I came across this article from Defense News yesterday, and the topic is something that I have not come across before.  The gist of the article is that a Pakistani branch of al-Qaeda, or at least with members affiliated with al-Qaeda, was planning the assassination of Lockheed Martin's CEO.

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Evolution, Secrecy, and Bureaucracies

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This sort of reminds me of this.  Really one passage in particular, I suppose: We tend to marvel at the Darwinian perfection of organisms now, saying 'this must have been highly selected for, it's a tuned and sophisticated machine'.  In fact, it's a mess – there's so much unnecessary complexity. Bear with me.  The preceding … Read more

Quick Word on Elite Actors

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Dan Drezner has the most recent in a line of posts discussing the role of elites vs. masses in policymaking (See Drezner for links to the other posts in the series–they're worth reading). I don't really have much to add to the pile here–these are some pretty smart folks and they've said a lot of … Read more

Aid to Pakistan

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Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy has a piece up regarding the changes to US-Pakistani relations that may be coming out of this week's events.  Rogin is specifically discussing the debate in Congress over cutting military assistance to Pakistan.  Clearly this discussion has a long way to go, and the article indicates that significant divisions are emerging in both houses of Congress over what the appropriate response is. 

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A bit more on Messrs. Y.

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I previously wrote a bit about the document released a few weeks ago by Colonel Mykleby and Captain Porter.  Well here is a NY Times article (a brief one) on the issue.  I suspect the quick references to Bin Laden were added after this article was essentially finished, but there's probably more room here to … Read more

Obama’s Next Cabinet

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Via Steve Clemmons at The Washington Note, The New York Times has a story on who will be tapped to be the next Secretary of Defense.  And the winner is?  Mr. Leon Panetta!  Panetta is currently the director of the CIA, and according to the Times article, it is expected that Obama will soon announce … Read more

Welcome Aboard!

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The title is slightly inappropriate, as Italy had previously decided to send military advisors to Libya.  Maybe we should say welcome more aboad, or welcome aboard again.  Well…whatever.  The point is Britain and France had previously been pleading with their NATO allies for more support in the air campaign to remove Ghadaffi from power and … Read more

Healthcare Incentives

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I've apparently been sitting on this post for a while, so this might be (is quite literally) old news for many out there.  It's an op-ed piece from The New York Times from a few months back on the healthcare legislation (No, this it not about IR).    What caught my eye was at the end of … Read more

Facts and Stuff on the Distributions of Income and Race in America

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Via Andrew Gelman at the Monkey Cage, an article on this recent Gallup poll regarding people's income and their perceptions of income distributions, tax burdens, etc. 

The thrust of the article is that there are some disparities between where people fall in the overall income distribution and their perceptions of how the tax burden should be distributed—Not my normal thing, but interesting nevertheless.

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