Why have Edward Snowden’s actions resonated so powerfully for so many people? The huge political impacts of the leaked NSA documents account for just part of the explanation. Snowden’s choice was ultimately personal. He decided to take big risks on behalf of big...
Getting to the top of a Congressional committee with foreign policy implications is reserved mostly for the lunatic hawks, and Congressmen who are reasonable are usually anonymous. But maybe a little less anonymous today, after 118 members of the House of...
I’m shocked – shocked! – that Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who ruled in February that Bradley Manning could be tried on various charges even after being held prior to arraignment for more than five times the absolute longest time specified in the US Armed...
A lot of people are up in arms over the announcement that Liz Cheney, daughter of war criminal Dick Cheney, will run against fellow Republican Mike Enzi for his Senate seat in Wyoming. Republicans are upset because it's uncouth for a Republican to challenge an...
In debating a U.S. intervention in Syria, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not it would be comparable to Iraq. Advocates of intervention say "Syria is not Iraq," and argue we have "over-learned the lessons of Iraq." Opponents, like myself, say Syria is...
Edward Snowden has formerly requested temporary asylum in Russia and promised, under President Putin's stipulations, that he will not leak anything further. Still, his ultimate destination is thought to be somewhere in Latin America. From Just the Facts, here are some...
Stefan Svallfors, a Swedish professor on the Nobel Committee, has nominated NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for a Nobel Peace Prize. Svallfors says Snowden deserves it due to his "heroic effort," and notes that it would help recover the prize's "disrepute" following...
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that legal advisers to President Obama have warned him since the beginning that aiding the Syrian rebels probably violated international law and risked a direct conflict with the Assad regime. Members of the so-called Lawyers Group...
In May of last year I noted at this blog reports that an amendment had been slipped into the 2013 NDAA bill that nullified two U.S. laws - the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987 - that ban domestic propaganda. This month marks the...
