[caption id="attachment_7424" align="alignleft" width="136" caption="Dawn Johnsen"][/caption] On Saturday, Barack Obama used his power to make administration appointments with the Senate in recess, placing fifteen previously nominated appointees into executive branch positions. Coverage of Obama's appointments focused on whether Republicans are angry (They are!) and if recess appointments (which both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton liberally employed) signaled further erosion of bipartisanship. Less commented on is how vacant positions impact the workings of government. One example is a post that Obama decided not to fill with a recess appointment -- the head of the Justice Dept's Office of Legal Counsel, a position that Obama nominated Indiana law professor Dawn Johnsen to fill sixteen months ago.

The strain of two wars on Pentagon and State Dept personnel has opened up novel opportunities for government contractors.

The Washington Post's Joby Warrick reports that the Government Accountability Office has decided that the State Dept. improperly rewarded Xe Services -- the company formerly known as Blackwater and I'm going to call them Blackwater -- a $1 billion contract to train police officers in Afghanistan. Blackwater rival contractor ...

Here's an oldie but goodie -- State Dept. contracts to rebuild Iraq are vulnerable to billions in waste, fraud and abuse. The Wall Street Journal's August Cole relays an Iraq special inspector general report that police training by Virginia-based company DynCorp is not being adequately monitored by State Dept. ...

The Washington Post's Mary Beth Sheridan and Greg Jaffe reports that Defense Sec. Robert Gates wants to merge together the Pentagon and State Departments responsibilities for nation-building in failing states like Somalia and Yemen: The proposal would concentrate existing and new money in three long-term funds totaling as much as $2 billion. They would be dedicated to training security forces, preventing conflicts and stabilizing violence-torn societies around the world. The funds would exist separately from the war budgets, and allow for quicker and better-coordinated response to looming or actual conflicts, officials said. In a memo to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gates noted that the huge increase in Pentagon funding for stabilization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has prompted complaints about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy. // ') ; } // ]]> The proposal "sets forth a new approach that could transcend these debates. It argues for a new model of shared responsibility and pooled resources for cross-cutting security challenges," Gates wrote in the unclassified Dec. 15 memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post. It is hard to see, though, how a $2 billion program can transcend any national security debate.

Secretary of State Clinton's recent speech on America’s human rights agenda at Georgetown University may deserve a place in history, if the Obama Administration sticks to its own program. The language was definitely Clintonian (Hillarian?) – straightforward, mostly unambiguous, and inspiring in a grounded sort of way.  It included the following insights: "Democracy has proven the best political system for making human rights a human reality over the long term." "In democracies, respecting rights isn’t a choice leaders make day by day; it is the reason they govern." "We may call rights inalienable, but making them so has always been hard work." "Believing in human rights means committing ourselves to action, and when we sign up for the promise of rights that apply everywhere, to everyone, that rights will be able to protect and enable human dignity, we also sign up for the hard work of making that promise a reality." This was “the” Obama administration human rights speech for the next few years at least, since it laid out four key ingredients for human rights  in U.S. foreign policy.

The New York Times' James Risen and Mark Mazetti broke the news last night that the company formerly known as Blackwater actively participated in CIA raids against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blackwater also transported detainees for the CIA. This is despite the fact that that Blackwater's CIA contract stipulated that the private security contractor should only participate in defensive operations. And also that government contracting law and common sense dictate that private companies shouldn't be fighting wars. After the Jack Abramoff scandal in 2006, there was a lot of talk about the "revolving door" in Washington between lobbyists and lawmakers. It became a familiar narrative that members of Congress or former Congressional staffers would leave Capitol Hill and take a lucrative job in the private sector where they proceeded to influence their former Hill colleagues. What the history of Blackwater has demonstrated is the "revolving door" between the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and the coterie of private security contracting companies.

By Mitchell Polman During his tenure as director of the now defunct United States Information Agency, renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow said, "The really crucial link in the international communication chain is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.” Public diplomacy practitioners often refer to Murrow's statement in describing the nature of their work. It was with this vital aspect of human communication in mind that the Fulbright Scholars program and the Department of State's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs (ECA) in 2004 created the "Direct Access to the Muslim World" program. The program makes it possible for U.S. universities to bring specialists from the Islamic world to the U.S. for six weeks of teaching, scholarship, and engagement with local communities. Fulbright scholars in this program, visiting academics from countries as diverse as Indonesia and Bosnia, have academic duties at their host institutions, and team-teach with host college professors. They are also expected to meet and talk with high school students, community service groups, religious groups, and other local organizations. Many of the sponsoring institutions are small colleges, state universities, and community colleges. In short, the emphasis is on giving Americans, especially in rural and small-towns, the opportunity to learn directly about the Muslim faith and life in predominantly Muslim societies directly from scholars who live in a predominantly Muslim society. The scholars also assist their host universities in developing curricula and materials related to Islam, including at colleges with no or very few programs related to Islam. The program is in real demand. "It's been a popular program", says Andy Riess, from the Outreach and Public Relations office of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (a division of the International Institute of Education), which administers the program under contract from the State Department. One of this year's scholars was Professor Fikret Karcic, an Islamic theologian and professor

In the new New Republic, Michael Crowley has a short, front-of-the-magazine piece on Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. The piece mainly tries to impute significance to Clinton's verbal "gaffes" so far, i.e. comparing North Korea to an unruly teenager. Crowley less than compellingly concludes that such gaffes are a continuation of Clinton's mistake-filled presidential campaign. What was interesting, though, was that Clinton was being profiled at all.

Via the Washington Post, the Miami Herald's Juan Tamayo reports that Voice of America, the U.S. government's radio feed, will increase its reach into Latin America. This includes audiences in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, who have governments generally critical of the Obama administration. Mitchell Polman has written a ...