There are times I think many of this country’s citizens need to grow up, and this outcry toward Rolling Stone for putting a photo of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover which doesn’t make the kid look like a wild-eyed maniac is one of those times. Lots of my countrymen don’t understand …
Here’s the Boston.com live blog. I don’t plan to speculate about who the perpetrators behind this tragedy might be. Until or unless someone claims responsibility it’s going to be up to the forensics teams to figure it out. We also know that all initial reports are just that: initial. It takes time to uncover facts. …
Do I number any vets among my readers? Answer in the comments, please. The reason I ask is that I just read a thought-provoking article in Time which discusses the widening gap between the military and civilian worlds in American society. The makeup of today’s force misses the heart of American might: the common bond …
As Charlie Pierce says: The actions of the police department in Oakland last night were a military assault on a legitimate political demonstration. That it was a milder military assault than it could have been, which is to say it wasn’t a massacre, is very much beside the point. There was no possible provocation that …
I will be damned. I never really thought we’d find this guy. The astonishing thing to me is that there were no leaks. Intelligence found the compound in August, for cryin’ out loud, and confirmed it as a possible bin Laden hiding place in February. Navy Seals on two choppers (one mechanically damaged and left …
We’ve seen that headline before, of course. Just last spring the right-wing angrily pushed back on a Department of Homeland Security report which said as much. But Time Magazine just conducted a six-month investigation of some of them and determined they are quite real. “We call it somewhat of a perfect storm,” says a high-ranking …
And where’s Osama bin Laden? We’ve been in Afghanistan for eight years at the cost of 821 American lives. We’ve been in Iraq (which not even Bush/Cheney claimed as a hidey-hole for bin Laden) for six at the cost of 4343 American lives (Source). We’ve spent ~$900B on military actions in those two countries. We’ve …
Something I’ve been puzzling about quietly for a while has now been given voice by Publius at Obsidian Wings and by Paul Campos at Lawyers Guns and Money. They ask, are Americans really terrified of and terrorized by terrorists? From the behavior of the Senate last week one would think so. But is the public …
Via Kevin Drum, a theory outlining a nefarious plot to take out Osama bin Laden with an extraordinary agent. For the sake of the person suspected, I really hope it’s true.
“Follow the money,” Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein during their Watergate investigation, creating a phrase which has become a dictum for all subsequent reporters. So who’s still funding Osama bin Laden, six years after 9/11? Well, ABC News says he still gets lots of money from shadowy Saudi figures (video link), among other sources. …