Word: malleys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...were narrowly defeated in Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico, all of which are revisiting the issue this year. Now the focus is on Maryland. After years of failed attempts by death penalty opponents to bring a repeal bill to a vote in the state legislature, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is personally sponsoring this year's version, promising that he will fight to have the legislature pass it during the current 90-day session. In his state of the state address last week O'Malley called capital punishment "outdated, expensive and utterly ineffective." (See the top 10 crime stories...
...Governor O'Malley can't budge any of those swing voters, there are still parliamentary moves at his disposal that could allow him to bring the bill to the full chamber without a committee vote. One of them would be to persuade lawmakers on the committee who oppose the bill to release it anyway without a recommendation of any kind from their body. Some anti-repeal committee members are already said to be warming to that idea...
...Hamas talks. Those should be a reward for good behavior - perhaps not the recognition of Israel, which Hamas considers a matter to be resolved in formal negotiations, but a real cease-fire - for starters, the end of rocket attacks from Gaza. Meanwhile, the unofficial contacts that people like Malley have with Hamas are extremely valuable. They are the avatars of negotiation. In Iraq, the U.S. military has had quiet talks with everyone from the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah in 2004 to the "special groups" in Sadr City today. Our European partners meet surreptitiously with Hamas - the British diplomat Sir Jeremy...
...everyone, you're going to be Chalabied every time," says Daniel Levy, an Israeli who has negotiated extensively with Palestinians, referring to Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi who helped mislead the U.S. into war with Iraq. Indeed, the next President will be negligent if he doesn't include someone like Malley in his circle of Middle East advisers. There is a need to keep all channels open in that insanely complicated region. It is tragic that both McCain and Obama seem poised to fail this essential test of leadership...
Obama has a problem too: picking a fight with Bush over the Palestinian question will draw attention to a weak point in his campaign. A Hamas leader recently endorsed Obama, saying the group would like it if he won the U.S. election. An occasional adviser to the campaign, Robert Malley, formerly a Clinton Administration expert and now an analyst for the International Crisis Group, was forced out of the campaign after his meetings with Hamas came to light. And Obama has distanced himself from former Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski because he is perceived as anti-Israel...