Happy 4th of July. This, from a bygone era, while still the official public narrative, is now just a nice piece of Clinton-era nostalgia… for those actually nostalgic for the Clinton-era… hmmm….

The Grey Lady’s Charlie Savage just gives us the (redacted) memo itself of the Justice Department’s stated justification for the state-sanctioned murder of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki by the United States government in a targeted drone strike. The memo was released as part of a court decision by the U.S. Second CIrcuit Court of Appeals in New York. Wapo has a bit more (including a citation to the wrong amendment). And for the usual spot-on analysis we get from Marcy and the gang, try this and related posts from empty wheel. Amusingly, the author of the memo was former DOJ...

As we encounter our first full day of summer, I give you… a Mermaid Parade image from New York’s Mayor Bill DeBlasio and family, featuring King Neptune Dante DeBlasio and Queen Mermaid Chiara DeBlasio. Having dragged my own family to said Mermaid Parade (in Coney Island) on enough occasions… nice to see Familia DeBlasio in the spirit. Nope… nothing snarky to say here folks… move along. Too nice a day for that sort of thing (just back from the Queens 10-K… in more or less the usual time… long trip for a short race…) And perhaps Team USA will prevail...

I am a tad troubled that I find myself rooting for “the traitor” [Edward Snowden] and against the minions of “our side” (assuming my college classmate [President Barack Obama] is even on “our side”) in this WaPo retrospective on just how extensive the efforts of the Obama Administration were to nab any and all defenders of freedom all dissidents Mr. Snowden. Of course, these efforts were monumentally futile. All it took to thwart them was anyone who had any intelligence whatever (and Mr. Snowden seemed to have oodles of intelligence in every sense of the word.) In particular, there is...

Isn’t “you’re welcome” what we’re supposed to say to the people we’ve “liberated,” whenever the inevitable results of our magnanimous intervention in their affairs results in a gift from Wonder-Working providence? One such case is Iraq… featuring the fall of Mosul, Iraq (as well as, previously, Fallujah) to Islamist Sunni insurgents called “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (“ISIS”). One would think that, perhaps, an American embassy garrison force of some kind– and a hell of a lot of mercenaries security contractors– might be of some assistance… but evidently, the Iraqis are, ahem, on their own, by and large. Presumably,...

Ordinarily, I would think that anything that gets a captured American service-member released, and simultaneously reduces the population of one of the most notorious prisons in the world (yes, you know I mean Guantanamo) by about 3% is a “win-win.” Nonetheless, I can only question this action. I’m troubled that at a place where nearly half the prisoners have been “cleared for transfer” for many years, why arguably the few dudes who might actually be dangerous (mind you, not that they’ve been charged, tried and found guilty or anything so “pre-9-11” as that) (a senior U.S. defense official confirmed Saturday...

It seems in this, the middle of George W. Bush’s fourteenth Barack Obama’s sixth year in office, that fatigue is setting in. Hence, after another seemingly dangerous and expensive diversion so that the President can “support our troops” by showing up in Afghanistan for a much-needed photo op, the (on?) crack Obama Administration advance team outed the CIA’s station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan. The WaPo piece makes clear that the alleged Fourth Estate caught the own goal mistake, and issued a “corrected” list of persons who would be present at a briefing with the President not including the name of...

Evil is alive and well in the form of… could it be… Satan? At least this is what some observers are gleaning from the commentaries of new “moderate darling” Pope Francis. There is a renewed interest in exorcisms, and the new pope (who, of course, might have some level of familiarity with evil himself from a prominent role in Argentina during “dirty wars” and other unpleasant periods there) likes to talk about the Devil… a lot. [Some accuse a Pope who has been a public relations boon to the Church thus far of risking all that goodwill by what they...

I’m just having a hard time remembering what it was. Maybe it was about Americans’ seeming (on a comparative basis) non-concern with issues climate-change, even as said climate-change bites them on the ass. Or at the moment our Supreme Court seems to be enjoying a rebound in popularity… Not quite sure where I was going. Doesn’t matter so much, as no one seems to be reading. Much has happened in the 12 1/2 or so years since this “the talking dog” exercise got going (or the two and a half decades or so since “the world wide web” came on)…...

Utterly hilarious… when the nominal leader of government yuks it up with the nominal leaders of the media… all of whom work for the great big brotherhood of man money and power that a recent Princeton/Northwestern study found result in this nation being… wait for it… an oligarchy and not a democracy. Better late than never, I suppose, that one reaches that state of realization. Yes, boys and girls, the political machinations of “Democrat vs. Republican”… don’t mean much anything: at the end of the day, them what has gets in our system. And so, our nominal leader in a...