Sitting on a couch in a penthouse hotel suite just blocks from the White House, Ayad Jamal al-Din lets cigar smoke curl in lazy trails around his head as he considers the fate of his nation. “I am not hopeful that Iraq can yet fly alone,” he says. It is a familiar refrain that the 49-year-old cleric, a fiercely secular Shiite, conveys to anyone in Washington who is willing to listen. Read the rest of this entry »

John Yoo’s book Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power is getting good reviews from historians. But Yoo is perhaps more accustomed to criticism, given that he coauthored some of the controversial Bush administration memos regarding the use of torture to interrogate suspected terrorists when he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003. Yoo, currently a professor at the University of California-Berkeley law school, spoke with U.S. News about the history of presidential power, the “supersized executive,” and how the government should handle suspected terrorists. Excerpts: Read the rest of this entry »