Randolph Bourne entered this world, on this day 122 years ago, the victim of a mishap caused by someone who didn’t know how to use forceps: his face was badly deformed for life. Stacking the deck against him even higher, at age 8 he came down with tuberculosis, one...
Airplanes have been used to rain death down onto hundreds of thousands of people in their 100-odd years of existence. They also changed the way that people travel. A six month wagon trip turned into a three day train trip turns into a six hour plane flight. That's...
National security reporter Josh Rogin published a big scoop on Syria yesterday: "The White House has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a no-fly zone inside Syria." According to one administration official, "The White House is still in contemplation mode but the...
For too long I've been focused on the ruthlessness of President Obama's drone war. Indeed, he targets individuals he can't even identify and, out of the approximately 4,000 people killed, less than 2 percent have been senior al-Qaeda members. The administration...
In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg stated the following, in language that was introduced by Judge Robert Jackson, the lead American prosecutor of Axis war criminals: To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime;...
As Eric mentioned on the blog last week, Charley Reese has passed away. He was one of the nation's best newspaper columnists. I never met him in person but he and I exchanged a few letters. He struck me as the incarnation of a thoughtful, considerate, Southern...
In an interview with The Daily Caller, NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake the Obama administration's targeting of journalists, their sources, and government whistleblowers is an attack on the First Amendment. “[R]eporters have shared with me privately that some of their...
There's a discussion over at the Lawfare blog about whether or not finally repealing the expansive war powers authorized in the 2001 AUMF will actually do anything to constrain Obama and future U.S. presidents. Mind you, the Lawfare crowd includes former Bush...
According to Angel Rabasa of the RAND Corp., we really need to start directly arming the Syrian rebels. How do we do that without bolstering the influence and lethality of extremist groups? Simple, he says: just "establish as soon as possible a task force to organize...
In the U.S., our job for today is clear. It's Memorial Day and there are a solemn thoughts to have and wreaths to lay. "Ultimate sacrifice" must be repeated again and again. And as MSNBC's Chris Hayes learned last year, best not to raise even the smallest question of...
