So far, no condemnation or concern about international law has been heard from the White House.

General Stanley McChrystal told journalist Michael Hastings that he wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and so he was. The resulting story—describing an alcohol fueled dinner in Paris and the General’s staff mocking the Obama Administration—ended McChrystal’s tour as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan and his military career.

A roundup of US and world news that happened before Rick Santorum’s anti-women’s, anti-universal health care, anti-safety net but I’m still moral crusade kept the GOP primary going. In the real world, there’s unemployment, a bank settlement, housing policies, Afghanistan, a stuck transportation bill, Germany vs Greece, Feingold vs SuperPacs and much more.

At least so far, the attempts from inside the military to warn against an early withdrawal in Afghanistan are not working. In fact, the US appeared to move in the other direction today, aligning themselves more with France than with the military moles.

If the US fought for the post-carbon economy the way it fights for nebulous state-building goals in foreign wars, the future would be brighter, cleaner, safer and cheaper, with more jobs and perhaps – because it would need to secure less of that foreign oil -fewer wars. If the country built new classrooms with the same urgency it built armored vehicles, more American teens could be choosing between colleges instead of choosing between minimum and sub-minimum wage jobs – and fewer would eventually need public assistance. If the government spent more on blackboards and less on bullets, it would create more jobs today and more innovation in the future.

When I turned on the TV last night, I wanted to stand up and cheer. While watching President Obama’s State of the Union address, I felt much like I did when I watched his 2008 acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver. OK, that’s not true–not hardly. Reality has not been kind to Obama’s rhetoric, after all. But when Obama got to the energy section of the speech, I found much to applaud, not unlike in 2008. . . with some obvious caveats for his praise of dirty, dangerous, failed or flat-out fictional forms of energy production.

The focus on Guantanamo over the past couple years has hidden the fact that the number of detainees there has been dissipating somewhat. The number of detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan has exploded, with detainees captured throughout the world moved over to Bagram and shielded from any habeas proceedings. Bagram has become the black hole. So it’s good news, on its face, that the Administration wants to repatriate non-Afghan detainees out of Bagram.

I was struck by the way in which President Obama’s State of the Union speech was structured, with each issue laid out inthe same pattern: start with the conservative talking point, then move to the progressive positionas though the progressive-leaning positions were being given the rhetorical back seat. Only when the speech spoke of unity of worthwhile purposes did it capture what makes a nation great.

A New Washington Post/ABC News poll asked Americans “What is the single most important issue in your choice for president?” The poll found that the economy or jobs dominated the responses with 51 percent. No other issue came close to breaking double digits.

The Defense Department has identified the four Marines who urinated on dead Taliban soldiers in an infamous video that turned up this week. The military may charge the Marines with war crimes, though a final decision has not been made.