The Skeptical Bureaucrat

The new Director of Overseas Buildings Operations has been announced, and I freely admit that he leaves me perplexed.  First, he's not ...

  Or at least, our diplomatic premises there. See the  current State Magazine  for an article about how my good friends have done a clean...

  Ah, the Crystal Fortress!  Was a glass cube on a small site located in a former industrial zone worth a billion dollars? I'd say that ...

I have serious reservations about the higher end of the home security market, which it seems to me spirals way out of the bounds of common s...

You can’t get an embassy in a box unless you push *real hard.* https://t.co/m7RIcMsYyV — TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 26, 2024 I appreciate t...

The current issue of State Magazine - in-house publication, but available here to all our valued taxpaying citizens - has a piece on one o...

New photos of the construction process of the massive US embassy in Lebanon. It is expected to be finished in 2023. The embassy would be one...

It has happened before, but one does not get used to seeing the news that a colleague you've known for many years, even one you haven...

My good friends in the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) just cut the ribbon on yet another new Fortress Embassy, this one in Ni...

Consul General Ken Roy held a topping out ceremony today to celebrate the structural completion of the new @USConsuladoHer @BLHarbert @Pag...

(CG Guadalajara, according to an OBO design contractor)  I love the architect's-pastel-watercolor-rendering stage of new embassy constru...

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, city of white marble and straight lines This might be the most consequential screw-up in U.S. ...

The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently published a report criticizing my good friends in the Bureau of Oversea...

You're probably seen the video of a Department of State employee explaining how he cleverly skirts the Hatch Act prohibition on doi...

Photo of U.S. Embassy Athens from Discover Diplomacy My good friends in Overseas Buildings Operations have had a hot hand ...

A monk works on an illuminated manuscript To my good friends in the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations ! Congrat...

New York Times photo Wine and cheese? My good friends in the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations would love to go to ...

The 2018 State Department's 2018 budget justification was released yesterday, and with it a press conference was conducted . There yo...

Google Earth screen shot Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not ...

Trouble ahead, trouble behind And you know that notion just crossed my mind -- The Grateful Dead As the days tick down to Janua...