About this Channel

FP’s Election Channel, the only daily resource to focus exclusively on where the 2012 candidates stand on national security and international affairs.

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Michele Bachmann is no longer Swiss

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's 53 days of Swiss citizenship have apparently come to an end. For immigrants to Switzerland, and even children of immigrants born in Switzerland, getting Swiss citizenship is not nearly as easy as it apparently was for the Bachmanns.  Read More »

Michele Bachmann is Swiss now

The timing of this is pretty funny given all the fuss over Mitt Romney's Swiss bank account. SuperPacs could presumably have had a pretty good time with the all-American congresswoman's dual citizenship. Marcus Bachmann seems to have waited until after his wife dropped out of the race to make his application. Read More »

The List

Where in the World Is Same-Sex Marriage Legal?

President Obama still supports the idea of states deciding same-sex marriage on their own, despite his newly expressed personal views. But if same-sex marriage were to become legal in the United States, what club of countries would it be joining? Let's take a tour of the 10 places in the world where same-sex marriage has been legalized -- all in roughly the last decade. Read More »

Argument

President Paul

Ron Paul's treatment by mainstream media, other Republican hopefuls, and the punditry makes me think the W.B. Yeats lines "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" also describe the year 2012 in the United States. Indeed, Paul's experience in the nomination campaign suggests U.S. politics lacks reasoned substance, common sense, and an understanding of what America's Founding Fathers intended. Read More »

Argument

The Last RINO

The truth is that Lugar is already a spent force. Yes, he was a Republican who supported the United Nations and believed in international law. Yes, he abhorred inflammatory rhetoric. But his signature achievements -- such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has, among other things, resulted in the deactivation of thousands of Russian strategic nuclear warheads and the elimination of hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles -- are now long behind him and will have to be taken up by a new generation. Read More »

This Week’s Column

Terrorist Fishing in the Yemen

Last month, according to news accounts, U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to widen the scope of drone attacks carried out against al Qaeda members in Yemen. Previously, strikes targeted only known individuals; henceforth, the CIA and the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command will be permitted to target people whose patterns of behavior make them high-value targets. Many counterterrorism and Yemen experts think that the White House is opening up the gates of hell. They might be right, but I wish the alternatives they suggest were more convincing. Read More »

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