Monthly Archives: April 2011

A couple of days ago, President Obama publicly but quietly announced that he was re-shuffling the defensey-fighty part of his cabinet, putting Leon Panetta up for SecDef and installing General David “Surge” Petraeus in the top CIA slot. As the … Continue reading →

Glenn Greenwald had a nice piece a few days ago about the Washington Post‘s lousy editorial point-of-view on military spending. Greenwald points out that the Post is always willing to be a cheerleader for new wars, but then has the … Continue reading →

Spencer Ackerman from Wired‘s Danger Room thinks the new drone-warfare phase of the war in Libya necessitates spotters, and hence American agents in Libya: Gates didn’t say — and he pointedly reiterated that no “boots on the ground” from the … Continue reading →

Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon is mad that some French Catholic extremists have defaced Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ”: It should go without saying, but here it is: An image of Christ isn’t Christ. An artistic comment on religion or idolatry … Continue reading →

The Times‘s Economix blog pokes around in the data from a recent Gallup poll and finds that wealthy people often bracket themselves down into “the middle class.” Everyone thinks they’re middle-class partly because of cultural reasons, and also partly because … Continue reading →

From the AP via Salon: U.S. officials say the Army private suspected of giving classified data to WikiLeaks is being moved to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas in the wake of international criticism about his treatment during his detention at the … Continue reading →

Via the always-interesting Swedish Meatball Confidential (pNSFW): the Commission on Wartime Contracting issued an interim report to Congress earlier this year suggesting that perhaps security contractors are not a good substitute for actual armed guards employed by the United States … Continue reading →

Recent opinion items of interest: William Saletan, Slate‘s most knee-jerk contrarian, thinks Pakistan is weird for asking the CIA to stop waging warfare with drones in its sovereign territory after the Raymond Davis debacle. After all, says Saletan, fewer drones … Continue reading →

Julian Sanchez thinks we should stop using the word “deserve” in political or legal debates, and instead talk about what people are “entitled” to: [T]o pick examples I think folks would generally agree with: someone who makes a heroic effort … Continue reading →

Many people will probably be most outraged by the tales of bankers’ wives getting government backing to cover their investments in this investigation of newly released documents from the bailout in the next Rolling Stone. But as a guy who’s … Continue reading →