The Houston Chronicle

Two respected Iran scholars, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett , have proposed in a New York Times op-ed article that the Obama administration step ...

“What you're seeing is people offering substantive changes,” said Elizabeth Carpenter, the associate policy director at the liberal New America Foundation's ... and more »

As Steve Clemons of the diplomatic blog The Washington Note points out, Japanese, Chinese and South Korean officials “have learned that direct engagement ... and more »

“He did a good job,” said Jorge Castañeda, an expert on US-Mexico relations who served as foreign minister under former President Vicente Fox. ...

... reflected Washington’s mounting concerns over the violence, said Jorge Castañeda, who served as foreign minister under Mexican President Vicente Fox. ...

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that -- even assuming the sometimes-dubious savings the campaigns claim -- both the Obama and McCain plans would add more than $200 billion to the federal deficit by 2013. LINK

For business and elected leaders in Texas border towns, it’s a simple question: Since arrests of illegal immigrants are declining steadily along the Texas-Mexico border, why should the controversial and costly fence be completed?

An analysis by the Texas Border Coalition, an association of elected officials and business leaders, shows a 56 percent drop in arrests during the last four years by the U.S. Border Patrol on the Texas-Mexico border. Government officials have maintained for years that fewer arrests mean fewer immigrants are trying to cross the… more

Time to Make Outsaving the Joneses a Reality (Houston Chronicle)

"One in seven families is dealing with a debt collector," Ray Boshara and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation think tank wrote in a Washington Post commentary. "Children today are more likely to live through their parents' bankruptcy than their parents' divorce," they wrote. And that likelihood will increase this year. ...

WASHINGTON - President Bush has called Iraq a crucial battleground in a decades-long struggle against Islamic terrorism...For Bush, the lesson of history seems to be that patience is a virtue - patience for a long war against radical Islamist terrorism and patience for the war in Iraq.The president has been urging patience since the earliest phase of the war on terrorism."We are planning a broad and sustained campaign to secure our country and eradicate… more

Since the start of the millennium, Houston and other cities have been pumping millions of dollars into revitalizing their downtowns.

The urbanists fueling much of this effort say folks will move into city centers as long as there are urban amenities to support them.

Joel Kotkin thinks that's a lot of hype.

Kotkin, a lecturer and writer on economic, political and social trends, believes the suburbs are where the action is and that a healthy urban core is only a small fraction of… more