When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

In 2012, Ashley was made deputy chief of staff, intelligence for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and soon moved up to major general. In 2013, he took over as commandant and base commander of the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He became lieutenant general in 2015. His next assignment was at the Pentagon as deputy Army chief of staff in charge of intelligence, counterintelligence and security.   read more

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he brought in Ricardel as the leader of the Defense Department transition team. Early in the administration, she clashed with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis over the vetting of nominees for that department. Mattis threatened to quit if Ricardel wasn’t moved out of the Defense Department because she was blocking his choices for various positions. Shortly after, on March 30, 2017, Ricardel was nominated for the Commerce Department post.   read more

As commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, Greaves worked to find alternatives to the Russian rocket engine that powers the Atlas V rocket. Contracts were eventually awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne and the United Launch Alliance. Greaves also was there in April 2016 when SpaceX broke the Boeing-Lockheed Martin monopoly for the development of national security payload launches. Greaves was still in command at Los Angeles AFB when he was appointed to lead the Missile Defense Agency.   read more

Lipps helped write the law that cut $8.6 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Also known as food stamps, the SNAP program keeps millions of people from starvation. Lipps pushed for adding work requirements to receive SNAP benefits and rolled out the Trump plan to provide “harvest boxes” of pre-selected food in lieu of half of SNAP benefits to more than 16 million poor households. Lipps was booed when he proposed the boxes at the National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference.   read more

Tooke resigned March 7, 2018, after news surfaced of an investigation into complaints of pervasive sexual harassment, assault, and retaliation. The probe by the USDA also includes claims of sexual misconduct against Tooke himself, including an apparently consensual relationship with a subordinate before he became chief. He is also alleged to have offered a job to a woman with whom he was having an affair, and later threatened her with retaliation if she revealed their relationship.   read more

From 2009 to 2011, Hooper was deputy director of strategy at U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, where he conducted security cooperation, defense policy formulation, and military strategic planning for the Asia-Pacific region. He then oversaw strategy, plans and programs at US Africa Command in Germany, where he supervised a staff of 270 with a budget of $500 million. Finally, from 2014 to 2017, he served as senior defense attaché at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt.   read more

In 2008, Hazlett was named by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) as the state’s director of agriculture. She returned to Washington in October 2009 as chief Republican counsel to the Senate Agriculture Committee. When Republicans regained control of the Senate in January 2015, Hazlett was promoted to the Committee’s chief counsel. She remained in this position until joining USDA. Since taking the job, Hazlett has focused on opioid abuse and rural broadband, among other issues.   read more

Oxford served as as director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which attempts to halt nuclear weapons headed into the U.S. Oxford championed advanced spectroscopic portals, which scan steel shipping containers for nuclear materials. The $2 billion project was roughed up by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which in 2005 called DNDO guilty “of action being taken before thoughtful planning... Hasty solutions are fostering an apparent false sense of security.”   read more

The next U.S. Ambassador to Poland has no known connection to or expertise about Poland, but she has donated more than $525,000 to GOP candidates and organizations over the years. Mosbacher--who became rich from her marriages to wealthy, older men--was a defender of Donald Trump after his “grab ’em by the pussy” tape surfaced in 2016. Years earlier, she'd been described in the press as “beginning to rival Donald Trump as the Most Written About Person You Really Don't Want to Read About.”   read more

The brain drain at the State Department has sucked away another career diplomat as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson announced her decision to resign on March 1, 2018. Her exit--effective May 5--weakens U.S. diplomacy with Mexico and underscores the deepening crises in U.S.-Mexican relations and within the State Department as a whole. Appointed by President Obama in June 2015, Jacobson was the first woman to serve in the position after 55 men held that post or its equivalent.   read more

White has more than 25 years of experience in the nuclear field, working primarily on projects with complex technical, regulatory, and stakeholder issues. She has worked at a number of contaminated DOE sites, and since June 2017 has been decommissioning lead at Atkins Global. ECA Executive Director Seth Kirshenberg said that White “will bring an in-depth knowledge of the EM program and defense high-level waste issues to the Department.”   read more

Cornstein's chairmanship at TeleHubLink got him into trouble in 2001 when the firm was accused by N.Y. State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of violating consumer protection laws through a credit card scheme. The charges held up. As for Cornstein’s problem with Spitzer—no worries. Cornstein, a Republican, contributed to Democrat Spitzer’s gubernatorial campaign. The fraud case didn't derail Cornstein’s appointment to the board of the Battery Park City Authority, which was confirmed in 2001.   read more

When someone asked what became of Ayla, director Can Ulkay said, “She’s right here,” and asked her to join him in front of the audience. I have been going to the movies since I was four years old, and I have never witnessed such a dramatic moment. As the audience members collectively gasped in surprise, a shy, elderly woman dressed in traditional Korean clothing walked to center stage.   read more

The winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Square is a fascinating compilation of set pieces that are held together through the life of Christian (Claes Bang), the curator of an art museum. The film was originally pitched as a satire of the art world, and this is certainly the crux of the plot. But on a more personal level, the message is that you can be intelligent, handsome, sophisticated and well-respected, and still make really stupid decisions—frequently.   read more

This year a record 92 countries entered films in the foreign language category of the Academy Awards. I saw 90 of these films. Give credit to the Motion Picture Academy for allowing the entry of films that are not allowed to be shown in their country of origin. The two most notable examples come from Venezuela and Syria.   read more

Collie began his career as a teacher, and then served as a legislator, practiced law and served in the diplomatic corps. He was a sought-after expert on Bahamian law in 2007 when the courts were deciding the fate of the daughter of model Anna Nicole Smith, who lived in the Bahamas before dying in a South Florida hotel room. A longtime member of the Free National Movement, Collie was called out of retirement in 2016 to chair the party for the upcoming elections, which his party won decisively.   read more