All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Counterterrorism expert Juan Carlos Zarate said on CBSNews.com's "Washington Unplugged" Friday that the United States cannot stop an outside party from paying the pirates holding Richard Phillips off the coast of Somalia for the captain's release.

"The U.S. government does not get in the way of private citizens making arrangements," Zarate told guest moderator John Dickerson.

The American government, he noted, "does not offer concessions to hostage takers or kidnappers." But "if the shipping company were to want to pay ransom, the U.S. government may not be in a position to actually stop that."

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Zarate, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the growth of a "pirating-culture" has led to the current situation.

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While Senate Democrats and some journalists have called the Senate's agreement on a difficult economic stimulus bill as "bipartisan," John McCain thinks it is anything but.

And in a tone reminiscent of the 2008 presidential election, McCain criticized the Obama administration and Democrats on the negotiations surrounding the nearly $1 trillion economic package. "In the interest of full disclosure, that's the way the Bush administration [operated] when we Republicans were in charge. That's the way we did business, but I thought we were going to have change."

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