Not long after Secretary Rice expressed her "regrets" for US Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Tyrone Hadnott's alleged rape of a fourteen-year-old Okinawan girl, Japanese authorities released him after the alleged victim's family dropped charges.US Ambassador Schieffer made clear that although Japanese charges have been dropped, the US will continue to investigate the case — although …
Month: March 2008
The DPJ keeps pushing
With the Fukuda cabinet's popularity in free fall thanks to the fallout from the Atago incident, the DPJ's stance on the government's nomination of Muto Toshiro to be the next BOJ president has become decidedly less ambiguous. The DPJ has indicated that there is no chance of its consenting to Mr. Muto's nomination.In response, Ibuki …
The LDP’s personal-ideological struggles
Several media outlets, including Sankei and Jiji, have reported on comments by Kato Koichi, former LDP secretary-general and Kochikai faction leader, in which he declared, "The YKK is over."The YKK, which stands for Yamasaki (Taku), Kato (Koichi), Koizumi (Junichiro), was a political alliance formed in the early 1990s in opposition to the Tanakist politics of …
Tobias S. Harris 