I've resisted the urge to write anything about the dearly departed Antonin Scalia, in no small part because I've learned that it really isn't nice to speak ill of the dead, but I don't really know what nice thing I'd say about a guy who once argued that demonstrating innocence was not enough to save … Continue reading What the Supreme Court beef says about the GOP

Today is turning into "Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit" day, which isn't intentional but, you know, there are a lot of problems out there. The next rough spot is on the Korean Peninsula, where things keep getting tenser and tenser. North Korea tested The (Probably Not an) H-Bomb of Justice in early January, then … Continue reading Why not try something else?

Per Vox's Zach Beauchamp, it looks as though violence is back on the rise in eastern Ukraine: The resumption of hostilities in Ukraine, with exchanges of machine gun and mortar fire across the front line up to levels not seen since last summer, suggests a willingness by Russia, which supports the rebels in eastern Ukraine, … Continue reading Ukraine reminds everybody that it’s still there and still at war

The first thing I said on Alhurra yesterday regarding the partial or "provisional" ceasefire that the US and Russia agreed yesterday to (try to) implement in Syria (reportedly starting at midnight on Friday) was that we should welcome it if only because of the possibility that desperately needed humanitarian aid might get to some of … Continue reading The pros and cons of a doomed ceasefire

At Markaz, the Brookings Institution's Suzanne Maloney writes about the ongoing imprisonment of Siamak Namazi by the Iranian government. Namazi is the one Iranian-American still being held by Iran after Tehran freed four other Iranian-Americans in a prisoner deal last month. Another American citizen, Robert Levinson, is also missing and presumably held somewhere in Iran, … Continue reading Left behind in Iran

Maybe I'm missing something here, but a candidate who wins two of his or her party's first three primaries (caucuses, whatever), and has significant, if not commanding, leads in polling for most of the next round of primaries (at least those for which any decent polling exists), should be considered the prohibitive favorite to win … Continue reading If it were any other candidate…

A few days ago I wrote this about Washington's relationship with the Syrian Kurdish PYD and YPG: Something else to consider here is that the situation in Syria may be at a point where the return on US support for PYD and YPG has diminished so much that the alliance no longer makes sense for … Continue reading Diminishing returns all around

Earlier this week Buzzfeed published a remarkable look at life inside Boko Haram, based largely on interviews with women who were once held captive by the group. They paint a picture of a group that is poorly organized, orchestrates attacks for the hell of it, with little thought to any kind of plan, and can … Continue reading A look inside Boko Haram