s.e.a.l. aaron carson vaughn. his mother said he was a great american willing to give his life for his family and country. those are today's top stories. thank you for watching state of the union. i'm candy crowley. next sunday's state of the union lp be reporting from the campaign trial. ill bee covering the ames straw poll next sunday, 9:00 a.m. eastern. up next for our viewers in the u.s., fareed zakaria gps. this is gps, the global public square. i'm fareed zakaria. first up we have a star-studded panel, arianna huffington, joe klein and others to talk about the aftermath of the debt deal and the political landscape going forward. then why in the world are we not taking an' larger chunk out of the defense budget? i'll explain. next up, remember last

summer's controversy over the so-called ground zero mosque. forget everything you thought you knew and listen to an exclusive, the man behind the mosque tells the whole story. finally, a novel solution to parking problems. first here is my take. we've downgraded ourselves. we've demonstrated to ourselves the world to global markets that our political system is broken and we are incapable of implementing sensible public policy. the actual cut to the 2012 budget which is the only budget over which this congress has any control is $21 billion out of a total of $3 trillion in expenditures. everything else can and will be changed by future congresses. what the deal does is once again kick tough choices down the road, this time to a congressional supercommission that will have to come up with a larger plan to reduce our debt. it does nothing to spur growth.

without growth, the debt and the deficit will expand well above current projections. the manner in which the deal was produced has added poison to an already toxic atmosphere in washington making compromise even more difficult. democrats now feel they need to mirror the tea party's tactics because they worked and they are becoming unyielding on any cuts to entitlement programs like medicare. republicans emboldened by the success of their bullying have closed ranks more solidly around a no-tax agenda, which is great. but the only solution to america's debt dilemma needs to involve both cuts to entitlement programs and higher tax revenues. congress is more polarized than ever before. that polarization has resulted in paralysis. more than two years into the obama administration, hundreds of key positions in government remain vacant for lack of senate confirmation. the treasury department, for example, had to handle the

global financial crisis, recession, bank stress tests, the automaker bailouts as well as usual duties with about a dozen of its senior positions, almost the entire top management vacant, nobody in there. senate rules have been used, abused and twisted to allow constant delay and blockage. the filibuster, which was historically employed about once a decade is now a routine procedure that allows the minority to thwart the will of the majority. in 2009, senate republicans filibustered a stunning 80% of major legislation. given how the chamber is composed, two senators per state no matter how thinly populated those states, people representing just 10% of the country can block all legislation. is that how a democracy should function? these dysfunctions come at a bad time. the united states faces intense pressures from an aging

population, technological change, globalization, new competitors. we need smart policies in every field. we need to pair back spending in areas like health care and pensions, but we need to expand it in others like research and development, infrastructure and education in order to boost economic growth. in an age of budgetary limits, the money needs to be spent wisely and only on programs that are effective. in area after area, energy, immigration, infrastructure, government policy is suboptimal, a sad mixture of political paves, corruption and ideological position. countries from canada to australia to singapore are implementing smart policies, copying best practices from around the world. we bicker and remain paralyzed. if as a result of these congressional antics interest rates on america's debt rise by

1% -- in other words, if the world asks for just a little bit more interest in order to lend us money, the budget deaf site will rise by $1.3 trillion over ten years. that would more than wipe out the entire ten years of cuts proposed in the debt deal. that's the system at work these days. for more on this, you can read my cover story in this week's "time" magazine or time.com. let's get started. joining me now to discuss dysfunction in washington or maybe the system is working, arianna huffington, editor in chief of the aol "huffinigton post" media group, joe klein, political columnist for "time" magazine, nicholas warp shot and ray ham salaam who writes the agenda blog on national review online. joe, you've been around a long time.

have you seen anything like what happened over the last month? >> well, in the several centuries i've been reporting, i can say no. in fact, we're in a position in this country that is the exact opposite of where we were when i began as a journalist 40 years ago. in those days there were real divisions in the country. people were getting killed, there were huge riots in the country. the anti-war movement had taken a turn toward the irrational. weather men were blowing up buildings on college campuses, but the political system worked. there were filibusters against the civil rights legislation, but they were defeated. the democrats did not use the debt ceiling, and we had one at that point, to stop funding for the vietnam war. impeachment bibi partisan and only happened because republicans thought that richard nixon had done violence to the constitution. now we have the exact opposite. it seems that, the way i read the polls, 60% of the people are

in favor of the kind of policies that president obama and the gang of six wanted, to deal with this deficit, long-term deficit through a mix of revenues and budget cutting, and yet that national consensus was thwarted by the minority of a minority in the congress, and so no, i've never seen anything like this before. >> now, you look at this and you say -- i heard you somewhere say, if obama thought he was playing for independence by being the grownup in the middle, it didn't work. why? >> right. well, you see in your own cnn poll you see over 60% of independents are opposed to the deal. so if obama thought that this was really his way of saying to independents, i'm the grownup in the room, i'm going to compromise, go with me, it's not working. on purely economic terms this is not working. you had larry summers on your

show say without growth you're not ever going to be able to really deal with the deficit crisis. you had jpmorgan with their top clients this week saying that this deal is going to reduce growth by a point and a half. you had basically pretty reasonable consensus among economists, this is not the right policy long term to control the deficit. if this is a political play from obama, it failed because independents are turning on him and the deal. >> but rand, you see this very differently. you see this actually as a turning point in the growth of the american welfare state. >> i do. i think you made an important remark in your opening statement, talking about how this year, this fiscal year, it's a cut of $20 million, about $22 billion. that is not terribly disstimmive. we could complain that we should have more stimulus and we could talk about that at length. i think this debt limit deal doesn't do all that much of

consequence. in fact, the cuts in it are smaller than what you saw in bowl simpson, granted it also created revenue sources. it's not really what people imagine it to be. >> couldn't you make the case though, joe, if you just play this out -- let's assume congress remains as paralyzed as ever, the commission deadlocked. >> i don't think you can assume that. >> the commission deadlocks, the guillotine falls, you get these cuts, half in defense -- >> you'll have a patch unfortunately. >> then obama says fine, i'm going to let the bush tax cuts expire. you effectively get simpson bowls. you get about $2.5 trillion in spending cuts -- >> that's why some of the, if i may, hysteria around this conversation coming from my friends on the left of center is notable because again this deal is part of a larger architecture. it's not just one decision ander go everything is decided oopsz. the president has considerable leverage. also, after a presidential

election, were he to be re-elected. returning to clinton era tax rates might sound more reasonable -- >> he's still got to be re-elected. this makes what happened last week has made it much more difficult. the political argument has moved on to the tea party territory. they might consider themselves victorious because they haven't got all the bits and pieces they're interested in. many of those are conflicting in any case. they have moved the national conversation onto the fact that you may not raise taxes in any circumstances and you may not do all the measures that the president needs to get himself re-elected which would boost the economy, which would allow the prosperity to allow people to pay off the debt. >> you're not going to get a bipartisan consensus around raising taxes. >> arianna, what happens to the left? will you rent hundreds of buses for obama's next rally the way you did for jon stewart's? >> well, actually, i think this

right-left distinction has nothing to do with this debate. because there's a real consensus, as joe said, among the american people that we need both revenue increases and ways to encourage the creation of jobs. there's a real consensus around big infrastructure projects, for example. even if we're at full employment, we would need big infrastructure projects because our infrastructure is crumbling. there is consensus around a national payroll tax holiday. there are a lot of interesting proposals on the table but not easily divisible as left or right. >> this goes back to what nick was saying. the most important consensus among the american people is this stuff that washington is obsessed with isn't nearly as important as the economy. i think that is -- >> what arianna is talking about is ways to get the economy growing. you think they don't make that connection? >> i think the american people believe that this whole debt --

long-term deficit and debt debate is irrelevant to their lives. what's relevant is the fact that the economy is sagging. >> but then they would be in favor of keynesian fixes, but they're not, are they? >> they're in favor of everything. the answer is yes. yes to tax cuts, yes to more benefits in medicare and social security. yes to budget cuts. yes to more benefits. >> there's no clans there's going to be a stimulus bill, is there? >> i don't know what's coming down the pike. there's one thing you said at the beginning i would quibble with and it's this. in the days before the debt ceiling deal was made, u.s. treasury bonds, especially the ten-year bond, were strengthening in value, not weakening. the interest rates were dropping. there are two reasons for that.

one is that our bonds are questionable except for every other country in the world which is more questionable. but also the most important thing is that the bond market senses that we're heading toward a double dip recession. >> you saw what happened to the markets. >> it's predicting that the value of bonds increases in recessions. interest rates will continue to go down, believe it or not. >> i would agree with you, joe. i just say -- robert rubin says this often, the bond market is with you oopsz until the day it is against you. you don't want to be in a situation where your debt is so large that small changes in interest rates cause massive damage to your economy which is what's happening to italy right now. >> of course. >> we'll have to take a break and we'll come right back. [ male announcer ] succeeding in today's market

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you wrote a book about canes and hayek. you think the tea party has taken the lead. it strikes me as fascinating. this is a time for keynesianism if there ever was one. you're in a situation where it does seem as though there isn't much demand in the economy. for whatever reason, mostly because i think everyone has lots of debt. that's when government steps in, but you're saying that that's the moment in which kans has been discredited? >> absolutely. i don't suppose the tea party has read frederick hyatt. he was talking mostly about politics. his economics weren't as reliable. but what politically he said is there should be small government. there's no doubt the tea party has put small government or smaller government on the table and that's now the thing that dominates politically. >> arianna, how do you explain this? that you've had the biggest financial crisis and recession. one would argue in some part

caused by the irresponsibility of the private sector and the response not just in the united states but across europe has been that the right has been strengthened and the left has been discredited? >> i think the reason is that the public mistrusts government because the government has bailed out major financial institutions that brought us to the brink of collapse, that basically government is providing welfare for many en trched interest. government is not there any longer to support the weakest among us or the most vulnerable. you see this intersection of lobbyists, big corporations and washington is what people are turning against. >> they think of the left as the party of government? >> exactly. while even though in truth the government has bailed out many more powerful institutions. ev even now -- even paul ryan came out in one brief moment in ending bailouts for the oil and gas industries.

>> going back to what arianna was saying earlier, if he was saying he was going to play the grownup and be the man in the middle, it's not working. >> i'm not sure that that's true. i think that it is working. i think that people still in my interactions with the american people, they like the guy a lot. they respect him a lot. they don't feel that he's in touch with their lives. and his calculation is this, that as this goes on, he will be the least damaged of all the various parties. that's what we've seen. his standing in the polls have gone down. but the republicans' standing in the polls has pluchl ted. he's got to be feeling not too terrific but not too bad either. sooner or later the republicans have to choose some candidate to oppose him. that candidate is going to have to make a calculation about how close to the tea party, which

does remain a minority of a minority, how close to the tea party does the republican presidential nominee want to be. so i think the president is bemused by all this and horrified by the nonsense he's had to deal with. he's made concessions unlike anything we've seen a democratic president do before. proposing raising the age of medicare to 67. i'm not sure i'm in favor of that. >> i'm speaking to the national association of african-american journalists and their concern around jobs is palpable. are they going to vote for him in the large numbers who came out -- unprecedented numbers? >> in droves. >> it's a fear-driven campaign. >> the figures of unemployment of african-americans are 15%

plus. the very people who put obama in are the people who are out of jobs. it's the economy that's going to kill him. >> i guess you're going to say even with high unemployment, a second stimulus will be wasted. >> what i will say is when you look at the first stimulus, what they needed to have understood is after a financial crisis you're going to have a great contraction that's going to take a very long time. that's why the patient application of infrastructure spending might have been sound, but they wound up discrediting the idea of that kind of -- that's not classic fiscal stimulus, rather it's thinking, well, if you can buy something cheap that you ought to spend money on regardless, let's buy it at that tinl. >> the most ineffective part of the stimulus, though, was the part the republicans insisted on which was half of it which was the tax cut. >> i think that's fair to say. what they favored were permanent

changes to the tax code. >> that would be great for the budget deficit, have more permanent tax cuts. >> not just permanent tax cuts, but restructuring. we had a very narrow debate that happened very quickly. >> are you going to be enthusiastically supporting obama in 2012? >> first of all, editorially we have been very critical of many of obama's policies. and our reporters, our journalists, everybody has been puzzled by the fact that, while you have, as joe said, a national consensus about prioritizing growth and jobs, obama has not stood up for that. that's really the key position that we have been taking. we have reporters dedicated to putting flesh and blood on the statistics because they're incredibly tragic. what you said about young people, you had a story this week about the fact that you have hundreds of thousands -- not thousands -- of students who

go online to find sugar daddies to pay for their college duties, 248,000 registered on one site called seeking arrangements. our reporter talked to them. you have over $1 trillion in college debt. these kids are graduating from college and are not able to get jobs with which to start repaying their debt. this is just one area of our economy that we need to sound the alarm about because it involves at the heart of it the american dream and the possibility of bettering your life through education. >> nicholas, last thought. how will history look at all this? you write about these things. >> yes, i think they'll see it as a defeat for the president, and they may see it was the moment at which he became guaranteed a one-term president. it might go terribly wrong for him. i can't see what he could do. he could drastically cut taxes. it's not such a silly idea. actually it would be a keynesian idea. you have to cut taxes for people

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world" segment. everyone in washington this week is having a nightmare about a guillotine. i'm talking about the proposed cuts to the defense department. if the congressional supercommission can't agree on ways to reduce the debt by about $1.5 trillion over ten years, that pulls the trigger. and half those cuts automatically come from expenditures on national security. i say let the guillotine fall. it's about time. the defense department's budget has risen now for 13 consecutive years which is unprecedented in american history. in the last decade, overall defense spending has risen to about $700 billion which is a 70% increase. if you include the spending on

iraq and afghanistan, we now spend $250 billion more than average defense budgets during the cold war. that was a time when the soviet, the chinese and all east european militaries were a raid against the united states and its allies. today with no serious adversaries in the world, the united states spends more than all other countries on the planet combined. even as a percentage of gdp, the number of countries that spend more than us is very small. iraq, saudi arabia, they're either war zones or oil states. cutting defense spending as we wind down military actions in iraq and afghanistan, should not be difficult. it's unprecedented. after the korean war, president eisenhower cut defense spending by 27%. nixon cut the budget by 29% after vietnam. even ronald reagan scaled back military spending in the 1980s as the cold war was becoming

less tense. of course, as it got over, that process was accelerated by presidents george h.w. bush and clinton, all of it adding up to a 35% decrease in the defense budget by the mid '90s. given the enormous run-up in spending under george w. bush, even if obama made comparable cuts today, defense spending would remain substantially above the levels under all those presidents. after all, remember the simpson bowls plan proposes $750 billion in defense cuts over ten years. a recent report by lawrence cord who worked at the pentagon for ronald reagan, pos sits a $1 trillion cut over ten to 12 years is feasible without compromising national security. the defense department is the best example of waste, fraud and abuse by far in the american government. even when the results are pretty impressive, the costs and the cost overruns are eye-popping. take a look at these f-35 planes.

they can take off the traditional way as well as vertical. but the joint strike fighter program that commissioned the jets to service the air force, marines and navy, has been plagued by years of design flaws and massive cost overruns. the total cost for this fighter program is something like $300 billion and counting. robert bates has called the new designs for the second engine extravagant and unnecessary. that could be said for large swaths of the defense budget, extravagant and unnecessary. budget tear measures aside, this is a time for foreign policy. for two long congress has fatd ended the defense department; while starving foreign policy agencies. robert bates himself once pointed out there are more members of military marching bands than servicemen in the foreign service. the result is a warped american foreign policy. it conceives of problems entirely in military terms,

tries to present a military solution. as he came to the close of his presidency, dwight eisenhower said every dollar uselessly spent on military mechanisms decreases our total strength and, therefore, our security. it's time for a more balanced national security strategy. if the budget deficit forces that shift, so be it. we'll be right back. i'd never been discriminated against. i'd never seen that hate or that fear or that ignorance. i've never seen anything like that before in my life, and i was scared. my mom and sunny d! i love the taste. mom loves the vitamin c. and now it has 40% fewer calories than most regular soda brands. sunnyd! ♪ make today a sunny day! collect sunny d labels to get free books for your kids' classroom. go to sunnyd.com

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i'm candy crowley. here are today's top stories. the u.s. continues to digest the lowering of the u.s. credit rating. earlier on "state of the union" i spoke with forbes chairman steve forbes and former obama adviser larry summer, who despite differences both agree they see politics in s&p's move. >> it is a political move and i think it's really -- it will sound strange for me to say it -- an outrageous move. the government can pay its debts. it's got the wherewithal to do it. in a larger sense about the economy, i think the u.s. economy is in a perilous state.

this recovery has been the worst from a severe recession since the great depression. i'm surprised s&p would pay politics. >> s&p's track record has been terrible. as we've seen this weekend, its arithmetic is worse. there's nothing good to see about what they've done. s&p said to sell. warren buffett said to buy. that should tell you something. >> you can see my entire interview with summers and forbes at noon eastern here on cnn. syrian troops have reportedly targeted the city of dara sore ray in an escalating crackdown on anti-government protesters. the arab leagued urged them to halt the violence. four nato soldiers were killed in eastern and southern afghanistan in two separate insurgent attacks. nato recovery teams search the

wret kaj of a downed military helicopter that left 30 u.s. service members dead. among those killed was aaron carson vaughn. his mother said he was a great american who was willing to give his life for his family and his country. those are your top stories. now back to fareed zakaria gps. last summer's big news story was the broiling controversy over the so-called ground zero mosque. it was on the front page of papers around the world, led all the newscasts. protests against the mosque were furious and frequent. then the story seemingly died away. the man at the center of the media storm, imam faisal rauf is no longer involved. the man truly at the center of the project who brought rauf to it. his is sharif el gamal, the real estate developer who came up with the idea in the first place. he joins me mao to tell the story of the ground zero mosque.

good to have you. >> thank you so much for having me. >> let's start with the beginning. what made you think about doing something like this. you're a real estate developer. >> i'm an american, born in brooklyn to a polish catholic mother, to an egyptian father. i've lived around the world and moved back to new york when i was 18 years old. when i moved back to the city, it became home. new york became home for me. after 9/11, divided to reconnect with my faith. i did not grow up in a very religious home, but the seed of my identity and my faith was planted in me. after 9/11, i decided to start praying in a mosque which was on warren street. when i started praying there, there were several thousand people that were praying on the streets, on the stairwells of

this building, and it was -- >> the mosque was -- the rooms were filled. >> it was over capacity. the place was just filled. i made an intention, i made a decision that i wanted to help my community buy a building in lower manhattan. after looking at dozens of buildings and baring in mind that real estate in manhattan, manhattan is one of the most competitive real estate markets in the world. it's not like you can just pick a building and say, i want to buy that building. there are so many sophisticated operators here trying to acquire assets. so after looking at dozens of buildings from 2002 to 2006 and buildings that we lost and we couldn't acquire, i finally stumbled upon 4551 park place. when we finally acquired the real estate in july of 2009, in

may of 2009, the mosque on warren street got evicted, and the building that they were in got sold, and several thousand muslims got displaced. there was a major crisis in lower manhattan because there were thousands of people now literally praying on the street. >> then you decided at some point, well, maybe this should be more than a mosque. what made you think of that? >> in 2006 i met my wife-to-be, who was an american girl that i asked out to dinner. a couple, eight months later we're married, and she's a muslim. we have two beautiful daughters. my daughter sarah is about a year and a half at that point. i'm thinking to myself, i want to teach her how to swim. we live on the upper west side and we joined the jewish community center. every time i would walk into the

jcc, i would say to myself, why don't muslims have a community center like this open to all people, and that's what park 51 is. park 51 is a community center. >> and designed where it is because that is where the demand was, that is where the community was and they had been displaced. >> yes. there were several different -- interval interesting coincidences that happened during this point of time. one, we never knew that lower mon hat tan was the fastest growing residential neighborhood in manhattan and that there's close to 63,000 residents that live in lower manhattan today. they don't have a true community center to serve them, to provide much-needed services, whether it's for children, adults or seniors. >> this is all faiths? >> this is of all faiths. at the end of the day, i'm a new yorker. and there are jccs and ymcas all

over the city, but there are no muslim community centers. there's no muslim-led project where we as muslims are stepping up and building a community center giving back to the people. and it's open to all people. it doesn't judge you based on your religion, based on your faith. it's here to provide a service and to provide facilities and programs to the residents of the neighborhood. >> so when you find this location, park 51, at that point do you focus on where it is in relation to ground zero? >> no. it never crossed our mind. we never -- we never associated the two and we still don't. when we decided we were going to start understanding this idea of building a community center, one of the first things that we did is we started with the mayor's office. we started the outreach with the

commissioners and the mayor's office, and then -- incredible, incredible receptiveness and approval, and it was incredible. meeting after meeting after meeting from september of '09 till april of '10 we met every single local elected official or person that mattered in lower manhattan. >> all right. hold on. when we come back, we're going to talk about the crisis, how it erupted. sharif's response to it and what his future plans are.

we are back with sharif el gamal, the man who is truly behind the ground zero mosque from the beginning and still behind it now. when did you realize that this was turning into a controversy? what was the first inkling? >> well in may of last year we voluntarily at that point when we finished our road trip with all the local elected officials, decided voluntarily to go into the community board. we went into the community board voluntarily and shared with them this idea of building a community center. on that first meeting 16 people

voted unanimously in favor of this project. these are all non-muslim people, and they were excited that muslims were going to build a community center in lower manhattan to serve all new yorkers and all of lower manhattan which was the intention behind this project. we then followed that up with another full board meeting of 50. and when we went into that room at that next community board meeting, i invited my wife down to come. i got there a few minutes after her and she was just in tears. and when i saw her in tears, i said what happened? she said, sharif, you're not going to believe what's going on in that room. the people thought i came here to protest against the muslims because they didn't realize that she was a muslim because we don't fit whatever stereo type people have of muslims.

and when -- >> what was going on in that room? >> when i walked into that room there was close to 700 people that were protesting what we were doing, and for the first time in my life -- i had never seen, i had never been discriminated against. i had never seen that hate or that fear or that ignorance. i mean i've never seen anything like that before in my life, and i was scared. at that point we made a commitment -- personally i made a commitment that i would do whatever it took as a businessman, as a human being to make this project a reality. this past year for me has really been about listening, has really been about listening and going back to basics and trying to understand that there's so much

work ahead of us, that there's so much misconceptions about who we are as muslims, what our faith, what our practice, what our belief system is. criminals have stolen our identity almost in a way, and they've defaced our faith. >> so you get out of that room with the 700 angry people. and at that point it just snowballs and gets latched on to by all kinds of political figures. were you prepared for that kind of an onslaught? >> no, no. i'm a new yorker. this is my city, and all we wanted to do, we wanted to build a facility that is based on who we are as muslims, as americans to give back to our city, to create jobs, to create hundreds of construction jobs, to create hundreds of full-time jobs once the facility is open, to create over 500 part-time jobs. we were thinking of a way of

revitalizing our neighborhood, creating, stimulating our economy, and providing services to our neighbors. >> did you get threatened? >> i did. a lot of scary things happened -- a lot of very, very scary things have happened. a lot of very scary things have happened. >> did it ever make you think to yourself why do i need this. >> i have two little daughters. i would say that i want the world to be a better place for them, and that we have a responsibility that we just got subjected into this, but we have a responsibility now to reclaim who we are because if people knew who we were and if people knew every time a mosque or an islamic facility is built, it cleans up a neighborhood.

this is statistically speaking across the 50 states, that it becomes a beacon of light. and unfortunately criminals have taken control of the narrative today. and that's what was the -- that was the impact of what we had gotten. >> will you be able to build the project? >> that's going to be a function of the community. this project is going to be as small or as big as ultimately the community decides. we are committed right now to building -- one of the buildings we're 100% committed to. it's going to take a shape and a form dependent of what the community comes back to us with. >> you're not backing down? >> from doing the right thing? backing down from doing the right thing, from providing first and foremost a place for people to pray, for muslims to

pray in lower manhattan after they've been displaced and then going a step further and trying to provide community facilities to a neighborhood that needs community facilities, backing down from doing the right thing? >> sharif gamal, pleasure to have you. >> so honored to be here. thank you, fareed. >> and we will be right back. at bayer, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief.

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[ male announcer ] time to check your air conditioning? come to meineke now and get a free ac system check and a free cooler with paid ac service. meineke. we have the coolest customers. the trial of former egyptian president hosni mubarak and other officials started this week which brings us to our question from the gps challenge. it is where in cairo is egypt's trial of the century being held? is it a, the egyptian supreme court? b, the egyptian parliament? c, a cairo convention center or d, a cairo police academy. stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. make sure to go to cnn.com/gps for ten more questions. while you're there, check out our website, the global public square. you'll find really smart interviews, all kinds of other stuff from our favorite experts.

follow us on twitter and facebook as well. this week's book of the week is an article of the week. in case you missed it, it is the extraordinary reporting on the bin laden raid in this week's new yorker magazine. nicholas smindal's "getting bin laden" takes you inside the operation. the article is absolutely gripping. we have a link to it on our website. just click and read. now for the last look, in the 1980s, new york's mayor ed koch famously posted signs around new york city that said "don't even think of parking here." well, the mayor in vilnius lithuania may have found a better way. that's the mayor getting into, yes, an armored personnel carrier. and he is a full-service mayor.