By JOSH KRONMOGADISHU, Somalia — The voice in the recording sounds unmistakably familiar — the tenor, the colloquialisms — a boy who grew up in America.  

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China’s Rise Isn’t Our Demise 

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By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — Fresh from orchestrating a historic victory, President Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, headed to the remote seaside town of Baku for a lucrative speech. For Mr. Plouffe, it was a chance to pocket an easy $50,000. But for the authoritarian government of Azerbaijan, it was a chance to burnish the reputation of a harsh system headed by the son of a K.G.B. general. 

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By SHELBY STEELE


To belong to an oppressed group always meant that you could not pursue your self-interest by acting directly on the world. You first had to account for the oppressor who had so much power over you. So you inevitably wore a mask that helped you navigate the oppressor’s bigotries, ignorances and self-absorptions. For the oppressed, the mask was power itself. And the four centuries of oppression we black Americans endured gave us masking as a cultural habit.  

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By JOHN R. BOLTON and JOHN YOO

THE Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies. 

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By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 — For the past week, the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan have been in the United States, circling one another like wary cats as they lobbed insults across the airwaves from a distance. 

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