Loose Lips Can Still Sink Ships by Michael Reagan In days past, other nations needed a sophisticated and highly trained espionage operation to know the details of America’s military might. Now, they only need a subscription to The New York Times. This week, the Obama administration released information regarding the number of nuclear weapons we have stockpiled: 5,113 precisely. This is a mere 16 percent of...

Kent State and the Frisbee Revolution by Michael Winship I was a freshman at Georgetown University when it happened, 40 years ago on May 4. Most of us didn’t know what had taken place until late in the day. We were in class or studying for finals, so hours went by until my friends and I heard the news. On that warm spring Monday, the Ohio National Guard had opened fire on an anti-war demonstration...

Abolish the Filibuster By Craig S. Barnes It generally happens in world history that change comes to rural areas later than it comes to cities and that, no matter where you are on the planet, rural areas are more conservative politically, which is saying the same thing, really, since conservative means to want to hold on to what was good in the past, or not to change too much. Whether you are talking about rural...

This blurb by Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars is fascinating. It is so blithely ignorant of its own irony that it could easily be construed as a child sticking its tongue out at a playmate and sneering, “So there, nyeah.” The next time you hear some right-winger (most notably Dick Cheney) sneer at the Obama administration’s “law enforcement approach to terrorism,” remember this. Remember...

How a Maine blogger forced a gubernatorial campaign staffer to resign over plagiarism allegations by Simon Owens Les Otten is no stranger to plagiarism charges. Not long after the former American Skiing Company CEO entered the race for Maine governor last summer, his campaign was accused of ripping off Obama’s iconic “O” logo and website, a situation only made worse when he responded with the...

John McCain is saying we shouldn’t mirandize an American citizen who has been arrested for his participation in the Times Square bomb plot: It would have been a serious mistake to have read the suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing his Miranda rights, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday. McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a longtime leading Republican...

You can make a marginal case in favor of the Arizona law that cracks down on illegal immigrants by giving police wide latitude to arrest and detain those in the country without proper documentation. The state is under siege, and the federal government refuses to do anything meaningful to stop the flow of drug traffickers, criminals, and economic refugees from Mexico and other Central American countries. The...

by Randy Miller, Utah League of Independent Voters Well, I was born that way. We all were. Partisanship, like its cousin Prejudice, is learned. I was 20 years old serving as a Mormon missionary in North Dakota when Ross Perot ran for (and nearly won) President of the United States. I did not vote that year. Missionaries are discouraged from watching television and from discussing politics. I didn’t know...

Did you hear? President Obama called out a SWAT team to threaten tea party protestors in Quincy, Illinois yesterday. Don’t believe me? Ask premiere conservative blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit writing on Andrew Brietbart’s Big Government website who headlines his piece “Team Obama Calls Out Swat Team on Tea Party Patrioits: The SWAT Team was called in today at the Quincy Tea Party Rally....

This is one of the more amusing stories about modern media you’ll ever read. Today was supposed to be “Everybody Draw Muhammad” Day on the internet, where those with a creative bent were to draw the prophet in caricature or representationaly, ostensibly to stand in solidarity with the creators of South Park who were threatened by Islamic bullies for dressing Muhammad up in a teddy bear outfit...

First in a series. This post by Julian Sanchez started an internet conversation/debate on what he calls “epistemic closure” on the right. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and...

Center-left pundit Peter Beinart is perfectly OK with the idea that the Democrats may get clobbered in this year’s midterms. He writes that he’s happy enough that the Democrats have passed health care reform, the stim bill, and most likely, the financial reform package: All of which makes me feel… pretty darn good. There’s a tendency, especially on television, to judge policy by how it affects...

Izzy Rosen, whose profession has enabled him to learn a great deal about mob lore over the last 30 years…. “The bad guys’ had their ‘old Mafiosi on the East Coast, time, long ago. Below Rosen writes about the arrest yesterday of 14 members alleged to be part of the “Gambino crime family,” an old mob from New York. The U.S. Attorney and Federal Bureau of Investigation charged...

By ShannonLee Check here for the first installment in this two-part series. ————————- At the end of the last installment, I had just decided that we were to stay in Dublin and wait for our Sunday evening flight to Frankfurt. Our seats had moved from stand-by to verified, and in my best judgment at the time, that was safer than arriving in London with no plan,...

It was just a shopworn political gesture when you come right down to it. Two popular politicians giving each other a man hug at a time when both were riding sky high in the polls. President Obama’s approval rating was still above 60% and Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s numbers weren’t too far behind when the two men embraced at a town hall meeting to drum up support for the stim bill. Both...

By ShannonLee My wife and I were in Galway, Ireland, for a guest speaking invitation. We were set to fly out of Galway at 7:30 am last Thursday, April 15. We had a short layover in Dublin and then to Frankfurt. That was the plan. This is what happened. ————————- Thursday 4/15 8:00 am: We arrived in Dublin, worked our way through immigration and security (for...

It may be a juvenile thing to do, but I like to personalize history sometimes, going back in time and placing myself in the shoes of those who lived the history I am reading. It’s a harder exercise than you might think. In order to make this little parlor game worthwhile, you have to know something about how people lived at the time, how they thought, what they believed. By placing yourself in the middle...

Stuck in the Spin Cycle by Peter Funt Rhetorical spinning used to be good sport. Think back on the scenes following Presidential debates, when high-powered advocates for each candidate pounced on reporters to spin every syllable so it seemed to favor their team’s point of view. It was unabashedly biased, and usually entertaining. Nowadays, though, we’re stuck in a constant spin cycle, and it’s...

Pajamas Media paid my way to New Orleans last weekend to attend the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, and I am just today recovered enough from my trip home on Sunday to write something about it. The journey back to Chicago from New Orleans was actually more like an Icelandic Saga than the return leg of a round trip. The only thing missing is Odin hurling thunderbolts at the airplane, although we were...

Clive Crook is making way too much sense: A moderate and intelligent opposition to the Democrats’ policies is badly needed. Apparently, nobody in the Republican party aims to provide it. Republican leaders seem intent on presenting the party’s angriest, most stupid and least tolerant face. Some leading Republicans who are moderate by temperament and conviction – John McCain, for instance – are being...

By Jason Arvak The New York Times reports on growing signs of rising interest rates on everything from cars and houses to government debt. This is the leading edge of a tsunami of inflationary pressures that is the necessary cost of a trillion-dollar economic bailout program and the chosen cost of an endlessly expanding set of government entitlements. The bailout for the banks politically stinks to high heaven,...

By ShannonLee I’m from the US but living in Germany currently, and it’s nice to listen to the radio without having to suffer the 1980′s all over again … or David Hasselhoff for that matter. I listen to a lot of AFNetwork (American Forces Network). It broadcasts, Bloomberg, ABC Perspective, and Air Force News, et. al., aimed at US government civilians, service men and women and their families...

By Jason Arvak The chief of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, has added to the growing chorus of protest about out-of-control spending in Washington, D.C. With trillion-dollar deficits projected for the indefinite future and under the pressure of large and growing expenditures in health care and Social Security, the numbers add up to a looming financial Armageddon that would make the financial...

By Jason Arvak The U.S. and Russia have signed the first major arms control treaty in over a decade. Coming on the heels of President Obama’s moderate reconceptualization of the U.S.’ nuclear weapons posture, the net effect is to produce the first truly post-Cold War nuclear defense posture. But it is worth asking whether any of it really matters. Nuclear weapons policy is, in many ways, the flagship...

They were typical Americans of their time; proud, independent, industrious – and obscenely racist in their view toward the black race. They embarked on, what in hindsight, was a suicidal rebellion against the United States government and fought with uncommon courage and a determination that eventually precipitated the extermination of their way of life, and the economy upon which they all depended. But...