The President Is A Blogger! (Whitehouse.gov/blog)

OK, maybe it is not the president, just the White House, but there is something there that has not been there before -- a blog!

Obama's Intelligence Advisors (Intelligence Online via Intellibriefs)

Intellibriefs pointed to an interesting Intelligence Online article (free with registration) about President-elect Obama's intelligence advisors last week. Intelligence Online is produced in French and English out of Paris (think of it as kind of a French Stratfor). They have several subordinate publications including Africa Intelligence.

The most interesting thing about the Obama piece has to be the "cheat sheet" associated with it (click on it to see the full version).

Obama's Ideas For Intelligence Community Reform (The New Republic)

The New Republic has an interesting article that contains some facts and speculation about how Senator Obama might try to change the intelligence community should he become president. The author, Barron YoungSmith, quoting the Washington Post states, said that Obama "would give the Director of National Intelligence--who currently serves at the pleasure of the president--a fixed term, similar to that of the Federal Reserve chairman." The intent behind the move is, the author claims, to make the intelligence community an "independent assessor of empirically-verifiable facts; that intelligence assessment is a non-ideological exercise in finding out what's true and what's not." Certainly worth the read...