Barack Obama laid the foundations for a new US foreign policy yesterday ahead of his trips to Europe and the Middle East, promising to work with allies to tackle the threats of the 21st century with a push comparable to the Marshall plan.

In his biggest speech on the matter since entering the presidential race in 2007, he said the US had "paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening".

It's the scariest book of any year in recent memory, if "scary" is understood to reach beyond mere bumps in the night and encompass the horrifying ways in which a great nation can utterly fail in upholding its own ideals.

"If there be one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1791, "it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."  

We are here today because our bipartisan governing elite and its media apologists have turned Mr. Jefferson on his head to America’s detriment.  

There really is a kind of a tsunami of shocks facing not just the economy but people's lives, people's real lives.

They're all intersecting.  

Yes that is correct, George Bush was found guilty of war crimes. Unfortunately it was determined by the Red Cross and not the Hague, Congress or any facet of our justice system that could physically detain him.  

The co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, today responded to a question about Cardinal George Pell's handling of a sexual abuse case by saying:  

A Treasury Department plan to bolster beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be added to a massive housing package working its way through Congress, to be to the president's desk within days, key lawmakers said today. 

What’s so funny about Barack Obama? Apparently not very much, at least not yet. 

On Monday, The New Yorker magazine tried dipping its toe into broad satire involving Senator Obama with a cover image depicting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife, Michelle, as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office. The response from both Democrats and Republicans was explosive. 

The US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is the federal agency responsible for all US government & government sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting.  

I spent 23 years in the CIA. I drafted or was involved in many of the government's most senior assessments of the threats facing our country. I have devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat. 

We rightly honor as heroes those who serve our nation and offer their lives to protect ours. We all 'support the troops.' Yet the first step for any commander is to understand the enemy.

Iran has condemned US presidential candidate John McCain for his remark that one way of killing Iranians was to export cigarettes to Iran, the official news agency IRNA reports. 

Iran Condemns McCain Over Ciggy Remarks

It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US environmental protection agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1m under George Bush's administration. 

The brouhaha surrounding the Iran issue has been taken up several notches on account of this missile launch, but let’s look at how much of a real danger it really poses.

The word began spreading across Wall Street trading desks on Monday morning: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant companies at the heart of the nation’s housing market, might be in trouble. 

The following statement from Leonard Peltier was read at the Oglala Commemoration.  

June 26, 2008 

Greetings my relatives,