It is highly likely that the March 29^th terrorist strikes in Moscow were carried out by Chechen female suicide bombers, also known as "black widows." After six years, Chechen jihadist cells have pulled off another successful attack against innocent Russians only minutes from the Kremlin.

The official U.S. response to the bombings has been to condemn the violence and "stand with" Russia, though support in these matters rarely extends beyond statements for the press. Beyond public diplomacy, what policy line does Washington actually pursue in relation to the Caucasus?

Pakistan has appointed a new acting minister of finance- Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. His title will be "chief of the Finance Ministry". He wasn't appointed "minister" because he isn't yet a member of parliament, so presumably the "chief" title is a way of getting around the law until a willing constituency can be found.

Past finance ministers have also had a knack for law-avoidance. Shaukat Aziz, the finance minister from 1999-2007 left a sparkling career at Citibank's New York office to take up the drudgery of public service. The only odd thing about his departure was its timing: he left when Citi NYC was being investigated for laundering Mexican drug money.

Yeah, that bad. An unusually large surplus (US$ 3 billion) at the Dallas Federal Reserve helped law enforcement uncover a laundering ring. During the investigation, Citibank's alleged money-laundering on behalf of the (then) Mexican first family, Raul and Carlos Salinas, were of particular interest to the congressional committee.

Shaukat went on to become Pakistan's prime minister- and the first one to complete a full term in office.

Since Shaukat's advancement, the position of "finance minister" has been a hot potato. His successor, Ishaq Dar, lasted less than two months. The following minister, Naveed Qamar, did better with five months' tenure.

Shaukat Turin was the next man to hold office more than half a year. Turin, who is also a veteran of Citibank, seems to have had less finesse than his predecessor Aziz. He wasn't a member of parliament when he was appointed as an adviser to the government, but that was fixed by July 2009. Seven months later he resigned.

So, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh- who is described as a non-controversial World Bank technocrat- has big oven-mits to fill. I'm sure Mr. Geithner feels his pain.

-- Evie

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Insofar as people today remember Massachusetts-born T. Lothrop Stoddard (1883-1950) at all, they remember him vaguely as a once-popular writer-journalist who had the bad taste to address forthrightly matters of race and immigration, as those topics concerned American national policy, in the decades before the Great Depression. People over 40 who read the footnotes while studying English might recall that F. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to Stoddard obliquely in The Great Gatsby conflating his name with that of his contemporary Madison Grant. A few people might further connect Stoddard with the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924. Stoddard lobbied for it, another black mark against his name by contemporary standards.

The wispy image of Stoddard will therefore suggest to most people, should it improbably appear to them, that the man belongs on the distinctly politically incorrect side of right attitudes and behaviors; they will adjust their emotions accordingly. Yet Stoddard contributed his considerable cachet to such causes as Pacifism and Eugenics, having been allied in the latter project with that distinctly Leftwing notable Margaret Sanger; he saw himself, in part, as an American Friedrich Nietzsche, rather as Fitzgerald saw himself as an American Oswald Spengler. In a recent VDARE article, Robert Locke protested cautiously against the existing caricature of Stoddard, reminding readers that Stoddard once exercised considerable authority as a public intellectual.