Summary: Despite a recent upsurge in threats and violence by far-right groups and loners, the Homeland Security Department appears gun-shy about reporting or monitoring the trend too closely. Domestic security and counterterrorism officials say that even though, in light of recent events, a controversial report issued a year ago by Homeland Security about a “resurgence” in far-right radicalization and recruitment appears well informed, if not prescient, the Department has done nothing to re-issue the report or update it. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 17, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured abstracts of research projects on the personality characteristics and leadership style of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Sarah Palin, conducted at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics under his direction.

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Summary: Intelligence reports indicate terrorist groups that have long used the Internet to spread propaganda are increasingly tapping the Web to teach Islamic extremists how to be hackers, recruiting techies capable of breaching government or other sensitive network systems for cyberwarfare, and raising money through online fraud.

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Summary: Afghanistan-Vietnam parallels: A president, eager to show his toughness, vows to do what it takes to “win.” … The nation that we are supposedly rescuing is no nation at all but rather a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent, corrupt government held to be illegitimate by a large portion of its population. … The enemy is well accustomed to resisting foreign invaders and can escape into convenient refuges across the border. … There are constraints on America striking those sanctuaries. … Neighboring countries may see a chance to bog America down in a costly war. … There is no easy way out.

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Summary: Why North Korea could become one of President Obama’s most vexing foreign-policy challenges: For the moment, the Obama White House has bigger priorities than North Korea. Still, the new U.S. president would do well to keep in mind that Pyongyang is continuing to tweak its nuclear-weapons program. It already has an arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of hitting all of Japan and potentially parts of the United States. For all its paranoia, North Korea insists it’s still under the threat of “American and Japanese imperialists,” and says that it has every right to possess a “nuclear deterrent” to defend itself. Appeasing them with money and oil won’t be enough.

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Summary: Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled a willingness to forge ahead with two key priorities for the incoming Obama administration: accelerating the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center. … President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team will include two veteran cold warriors — former NATO commander Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser and Robert M. Gates as defense secretary — and a political rival — Hillary Clinton as secretary of state — whose records are all more hawkish than that of the new president.

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