I don't know if I actually do prefer Huntsman to Perry.  I'm still in the process of thinking things through, and I'm with Mollie in trying to figure out why we've all written Huntsman off.
Just off the cuff, though, the big thing I would like about Huntsman vs Perry is his experience and genuine interest in international affairs.

That's entirely fair, of course.

Well, we can fault him for taking a position in the Obama administration, but do we really expect him then not to be cordial to Obama or Clinton?  Maybe he was gushing more than strictly necessary, but it's not like he congratulated either on policy.

I don't know that Huntsman's my candidate, but I also don't understand the rush to count every valid mark against him as automatically disqualifying.  Particularly considering the competition.

The classes in my current program of study are all ruthlessly curved, which I agree is an excellent preventative against grade inflation.  Or would be, except that our curves are set such that the class mean is an AB (effectively an A-/B+).  First year students are reassured "you can't get lower than a B" so regularly that a student wag recently wrote a song of the same title and performed it for our visiting prospective students.

I don't get it either, Mollie.  As far as I can tell, his most serious substantive fault is the AGW thing, and it's not like he's the only one who's fallen to the temptation to pander on this issue.

I don't see much video of the candidates, so I may just be missing whatever mannerisms are engendering such a visceral dislike from many of the Ricochetoisie.  The important question to me is whether Joe or Jane Independent Voter has the same reaction. 

I just pray that whoever is going to end up in charge takes charge, and quickly.  The alternatives are painful to consider.

My own suspicion is that, in the face of complete collapse of the DPRK, the Chinese People's Liberation Army is the only institution positioned to stabilize North Korea.  And while North Korea as a PRC colony isn't anyone's ideal, it would almost certainly be an improvement for the North Korean people.

Kim was a monster, but few individual monsters are capable of the devastation that genuine anarchy can bring.  Here's praying someone manages to take incontrovertible control, and quickly.

Anecdotal or otherwise, babies mean hope for the future. Including the ones named Muhammad.

Thanks for your perspective, Lauren.

We're all aware of the deep injustices of Saudi society, and I think we'd all like to see them end.  The key question is whether increased economic ties between the US and the Saudis will speed societal reform -- as you hope -- or merely fund those who intend to keep reform as slow and insignificant as possible.  I don't know the answer, and I suspect nobody does.  Not even the kingdom's rulers, which might go a long way explaining their schizophrenic stance toward foreign investment and societal reform.

Not likely to get very far in municipalities like New York and Oakland, that's probably true.  Elsewhere, we'll see.  The city of Fort Wayne, Indiana is facing a lawsuit from citizens who paid to rent a park pavilion the mayor's office later allowed Occupy Fort Wayne to use for free.  (Full disclosure: we celebrated our wedding reception in that pavilion, so my in-laws may be party to the suit).  A Tea Party group eventually evicted the occupiers by renting the pavilion themselves.

What do I think of these hacks?  They're despicable.  Whatever one's opinion of the War on Drugs (I'm mixed) there are legitimate ways to support its end, and this doesn't qualify.  Leaking identifying information about informants will get innocent people killed. I sure hope that if any member of LulzSec is brought to court, that the justice system treats them as someone who was willing to kill to advance their political agenda.

As for preventing this sort of issue, as wilber forge points out, effective data security is difficult and expensive.  Not impossible, but it's just one of many concerns that agencies have to balance, so breaches will happen.

My take is that this is where law enforcement has to come in.  Legislatures need to consider the applicable law and make sure that law enforcement has the necessary capabilities to investigate these actions, and that the penalties are commensurate with the seriousness of the crimes.

What finalized the decision for me was my time in Iraq after the Status of Forces Agreement restricted our operations, reading report after report about the new power plants, new water treatment plants and new roads that Iraqi, Turkish, and Indian businessmen were building in our province.  And you can bet they were making good money doing it.

I opposed the Afghanistan "surge" because I thought it folly to apply the media shorthand for what worked in Iraq to Afghanistan.  The Iraq "surge" was about strategic changes to the way our forces operated, organized and shared intelligence resources, and dealt with local players outside the government.  The number of troops involved was its least significant aspect, and there was an element of cargo-cult logic in expecting similar changes to make a similar difference in Afghanistan, an entirely dissimilar context.

As Claire so pointedly reminds us, the US media is remarkably adept at ignoring events in the outside world.  The media wouldn't even need to actively cover for Obama.  If they simply forget Afghanistan the way they've forgotten Iraq, it will be out of most American's minds come election time, no matter what the situation actually is.

For Afghanistan's sake, yes. 

Precisely. Thank you for this point.  The open-borders crowd so often wants to pose as if their policies are premised on treating people equally, but such a policy is by simple geographic fact hugely biased toward Mexicans first and foremost, other Latin Americans second, and the rest of the world a distant third.  Pardon me if I fail to see the justice there.  Even if we were to argue for mass immigration on humanitarian grounds, Latin Americans -- coming from comparatively stable middle-income countries by global standards -- would hardly be a priority demographic. 

While my liberal friends wring their hands about the horrors of life as an undocumented person, I often catch myself thinking it sounds rather like a libertarian paradise.