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By HARVEY C. MANSFIELD

It is now 500 years since Niccolò Machiavelli produced the most famous book on politics ever written. On Dec. 10, 1513, he wrote a letter to a friend describing a day in his life and remarking by the way that he had composed a “little work,” one of his “whimsies,” on principalities. This was “The Prince,” a short book for the busy executive so shocking that it wasn’t published until 1532, after Machiavelli’s death. It was coupled with the “Discourses on Livy” (1531), a much longer book for those readers with more time to observe and reflect. These are his major works, the ones that he said contain everything he knew.

In them he openly denounced both Christianity and the church: the “ambitious idleness” that Christianity imposed on Christians by demeaning worldly honor and also the “dishonesty” of priests, who govern by invoking the fear of God but “do not [themselves] fear the punishment that they do not see and do not believe.” He attacked morality by declaring it unaffordable: A good man will “come to ruin” among so many others who aren’t good. And he redirected politics by asserting that a prince must “learn to be able not to be good.” Yet he also said, still more shockingly, that he believed that his advice to do evil “would bring common benefit to everyone.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324244304578470880723398290.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories In Riveting Account of Libya Raid, Official Knocks Administration Response By SIOBHAN HUGHES And ADAM ENTOUS WASHINGTON—A high-ranking American diplomat delivered an emotional reconstruction Wednesday of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, providing the first detailed public account from an American official who was on the ground in […]

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By DREW HINSHAW in Timbuktu, Mali, SIOBHAN GORMAN and DEVLIN BARRETT in Washington

Western forces armed with drones, jets, laser-guided bombs and state-of-the-art wiretapping technology are engaged in a cat-and-mouse hunt for fundamentalist insurgents who have disappeared into the Sahara, holed up in ancient desert hide-outs.

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Terror leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar
Elusive Target

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, age 40

Tracked by the CIA since the early 1990s after he left training camps in Afghanistan to fight Algeria’s government.

Estimated by U.S. State Department to have raised $50 million from kidnapping tourists, aid workers, miners.

Used his fortune to buy stolen arms after the fall of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.

Mastermind of the seizure of the Algerian gas plant in January that left at least 37 dead.

The U.S. is working with France to find the fugitives, including Mokhtar Belmokhtar, whose followers commandeered an Algerian gas plant last month in a kidnap plot that left at least 37 people dead—three Americans among them. For the past decade, the 40-year-old insurgent leader has raised tens of millions of dollars from kidnapping and other criminal enterprises to buy weapons and wage a holy war, U.S. officials said.

French warplanes, before reclaiming Timbuktu last month, fired U.S.-made bombs at hide-outs and the command center of the terrorist group, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which for months had occupied the northern half of Mali. When French soldiers arrived in tanks a week later, they found the blitz to finish off the AQIM’s leadership had instead bombed decoy cars and empty buildings, according to French officials.

One drone has emerged as the go-to model for the U.S. Air Force and CIA. How does it work? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has the “Short Answer.” Image: Getty

Among the insurgents who escaped the French onslaught, Western authorities say, none is as elusive as Mr. Belmokhtar, a breakaway AQIM commander, whose brigade is named Those Who Sign With Blood.

The U.S. is employing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Joint Special Operations Command in a manhunt that underscores how quickly Washington is eyeing an expansion of its counterterrorism actions in northwestern Africa following the gas-plant attack. Senior U.S. officials are pressing to add Mr. Belmokhtar to a list of U.S. targets for capture or killing.

Since arriving in the country on Jan. 11, French and African soldiers have liberated much of AQIM’s seized empire, a Texas-size stretch of northern Mali. Mr. Belmokhtar and the others have since gone deep into the Adrar des Ifoghas: a mountainous gash of petrified lava slogs and cave-pocked stone outcrops the size of the U.K. that has sheltered bandits for centuries.

“We know for sure that these terrorists have hidden themselves here,” said French President François Hollande during a visit to Mali last week.

In recent days, France has dispatched attack helicopters and fighter jets on bombing runs, so far without result. The U.S. has sent surveillance planes and is considering a drone base in neighboring Niger.

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By MELANIE TROTTMAN, JESS BRAVIN and MICHAEL R. CRITTENDEN

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Barack Obama violated the Constitution in filling labor board vacancies, a decision that could reshape a long-standing practice by U.S. presidents to make recess appointments.
A federal appeals court ruled that President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor panel. Aaron Zitner reports on Lunch Break. Photo: AP.

Such appointments—which bypass Senate approval to install top administration personnel—have been used by presidents for at least 90 years. But in the past two decades, Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton ratcheted up use of the tactic to avert congressional obstacles. Friday’s decision, if it holds, would restrain that power.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the National Labor Relations Board for the past year has lacked the quorum required to conduct most business because three board members were named by Mr. Obama in recess appointments the court ruled invalid.

The decision strips the board of key powers and could void some of its actions over the past year.

The board made more than 200 case rulings last year, including a decision that protected workers from being fired for complaining about working conditions on sites like Facebook, FB +1.48% and a decision that gave greater rights to unions in employee-discipline cases.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852.html?mod=us_most_pop_newsreel Complaints by Female Social Planner Led to Email Trail That Undid CIA Chief By EVAN PEREZ, SIOBHAN GORMAN and DEVLIN BARRETT A social planner’s complaints about email stalking launched the monthslong criminal inquiry that led to a woman romantically linked to former Gen. David Petraeus and to his abrupt resignation Friday as Central Intelligence […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578050901460576218.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6 Racial preferences spring from worthy intentions, but they have had unintended consequences—including an academic mismatch in many cases between minority students and the schools to which they are admitted. There’s a better way to help the disadvantaged. By RICHARD SANDER and STUART TAYLOR JR. Jareau Hall breezed through high school in Syracuse, N.Y. Graduating […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444032404578006101784283218.html?KEYWORDS=DAVID+Goldman+BOOK+REVIEW By DAVID P. GOLDMAN Overall returns to American venture capital have lagged behind public markets since the late 1990s, Henry Kressel and Thomas Lento note in “Entrepreneurship and the Global Economy,” and a quarter of venture-capital firms have earned all the profits. Why have results been so lopsided? Globalization is a big part of […]

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By JAMES MARSON and LUKAS I. ALPERT

MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin said the re-election of President Barack Obama could improve relations with the U.S., but that he was also prepared to work with Mitt Romney, calling the Republican candidate’s tough stance on Russia “pre-election rhetoric.”

In contrast to what had been viewed as a chilly attitude toward Mr. Obama, Mr. Putin called his U.S. counterpart “a genuine person” who “really wants to change much for the better.” Speaking to Russia’s state-run RT television channel, he said a second Obama term could help solve disputes over missile defense.

The comments will likely be seized on by the Romney campaign, which in recent months has sharply criticized Mr. Obama’s so-called reset of relations with the Kremlin and pushed a harder line.

Relations with Russia first heated up the campaign in March, when Mr. Obama was inadvertently caught on an open microphone telling Mr. Putin’s predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, that he would have “more flexibility” after the election to address Russia’s concerns over the proposed U.S. antimissile shield in Europe.

The U.S. says the defense system is designed to protect against a possible missile attack from Iran, but Moscow says the interceptors could neuter Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Republicans denounced Mr. Obama’s comments as a sign of weakness; Mr. Romney said Russia was America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” Mr. Putin said such talk was “mistaken” electioneering, adding he was prepared to work with whomever Americans elect. He warned, however, that a Romney victory could complicate attempts to resolve Russia’s opposition to the shield.

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By MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY

Conventional wisdom holds that Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon—a political neophyte in a famously Democratic stronghold—has no chance of victory in November. But a Rasmussen poll released Tuesday suggests otherwise. At the very least Mrs. McMahon seems to be making it a horse race.

The Rasmussen sample, which surveyed 500 likely voters, gave the Republican from Fairfield County 49% of the vote against 46% for the heavily favored Democrat candidate, Congressman Chris Murphy. That three percent spread is the first time Mrs. McMahon has edged out her opponent in a poll, though she has been narrowing the gap for months. The Real Clear Politics average of polls, since the end of May, now favors Mr. Murphy by a measly spread of 2.6%.

The Rasmussen poll is also the first major poll released since Mrs. McMahon became the official Republican candidate, decisively beating former Republican Congressman Chris Shays in the Aug. 14 primary. Mr. Shays went down to defeat partly because his record in the House was considered too moderate for many primary voters. But Mrs. McMahon also spent heavily to crush him. The Los Angeles Times reported that the bill during primary season was “at least $12 million, much of it from her own pocket.” The former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) executive has deep pockets and she is not afraid to shell it out. In her failed 2010 bid to win a Senate seat, she used almost $50 million of her own money.

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By WARREN KOZAK

It was simply called the “Dayton Exercise” and for obvious reasons it was kept secret for decades. It was also one of the clearest examples of the trouble the United States encounters when it decides to precipitously draw back its military in a troubled world.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. had the most modern and best-equipped military on earth. No one else came close. It had taken the entire war to build it, and at great sacrifice.

U.S. troops fought at a distinct disadvantage until 1944 because of an earlier self-imposed disarmament. But when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the Japanese surrender and preventing a land invasion of the Japanese islands, the U.S. abruptly demobilized again. It had done the same thing 27 years earlier, after World War I.

In the Army Air Forces alone (there was no independent Air Force until 1947), the number of men dropped to just over 300,000 in 1947 from 2.4 million in 1945. On the day the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, there were 218 combat groups in the Army Air Force and 70,000 planes. One year later, there were 52 groups—only two of which were considered combat-ready. The airplanes that American factories had churned out were parked end-to-end in the desert, sold to other countries or junked.