Category: National politics

Bruce Riedel Bruce Riedel who spoke at a Miller Center of Public Affairs Forum June 15, is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution who retired in 2006 after twenty-nine years with the CIA. He has served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near East and South Asian Affairs, and as senior director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council. In the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Riedel argues that “Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before.”

General Paul Hester General Paul V. Hester, USAF who spoke at a Miller Center of Public Affairs Forum June 1, is commander of the Pacific Air Forces, located at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. He is responsible for Air Force activities in a command supporting 55,000 Air Force personnel serving principally in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Japan, and South Korea. A combat veteran, he has logged more than 200 total combat hours in Southeast Asia.

The United States should hold itself to the same standards of restraint that it requires of other countries if it wants to reclaim its mantle as a protector of liberty under law on the international stage, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton University.

“When we do not restrain ourselves, other nations band against us,”kj she said.

Slaughter is the 2007 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law, and her lecture on Thursday, April 12, accompanied the recognition. The Thomas Jefferson Medal in Law is the highest award the University, which gives no honorary degrees, grants to individuals outside of the University community.

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A look from mid-term revealed that the Supreme Court docket was full of key environmental and business cases, U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement observed at a Federalist Society talk in Caplin Pavilion April 11. But it is still too early to decide what the major themes of the court year will be, because arguments for the last session of the court begin April 16, he added. This term is the first in which all the justices of the Roberts Court are serving.

Clement is the nation’s 43rd solicitor general. The Office of the Solicitor General conducts all litigation on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court and supervises the handling of litigation in the federal appellate courts.

“This will be a term that will be remembered as having some very important environmental cases,” Clement said. “I think that the business docket of the court will also be a significant contributor to the importance of the decisions this term.”kj The jury is still out on whether this is coincidence or whether Chief Justice John Roberts’s background in corporate law is influencing the docket.