I'm back in but still "out" in any practical sense, so once again let me direct you to another thing that somebody else wrote (via LGM). In this case it's John Judis on the history that's brought us to the current state of affairs in Gaza. Judis cuts through the "who started it" issue and … Continue reading Another excellent read: Judis on Gaza

I'm out for most of the day, but of you're interested please go read Michael Collins Dunn's great piece on how Winston Churchill helped drive the Ottoman Empire into an alliance with Germany: One hundred years ago today, Austria declared war on Serbia, lighting the fuse that within a week would transform what Bismarck had … Continue reading 100 years ago today: the Ottomans and WWI

Or, if you prefer, "Shorter reform conservatives Paul Ryan and Reihan Salam": If you are the CEO of a bank, and you and/or your employees deliberately engage in risky behavior that causes the economy to crash and requires that the US government and Federal Reserve bail your bank out to the tune of trillions of … Continue reading The reform conservative maxim on poverty

In his defense of Paul Ryan's compassionate plan to help the poor by treating them like ex-cons, Reihan Salam lifts the veil around the whole "libertarian, unless" side of movement er, reform, I mean reform, conservatism: If all of this caseworker talk sounds paternalistic to you, you’re on to something. Conservatives hate nanny-statism, and are … Continue reading Paternalism for thee, poor person, but not for me or any of my pals

Every time I start to think we've hit Peak Know Nothing in this country, we manage to dig a little deeper and find a whole new vein of stupid to mine: In an intensely awkward congressional hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday, freshman Rep. Curt Clawson misidentified two senior U.S. government officials … Continue reading Representative Curt Clawson (R-FL) is a shining example of American derpitude and derpgenuity

Apparently the country was due for another round of Paul Ryan's "Message: I Care" tour ...because yesterday he released his brand new idea for saving the poor: The Opportunity Grant®. The plan is to merge a whole lot of individual programs for the poor into one program that gives block grants to the states and … Continue reading Paul Ryan wants to fight poverty by putting poor people on probation, for being poor

Before the massive protests in the West Bank crowded everything else out, one of the biggest stories out of the Middle East yesterday was a report from one of the UN's top officials in Iraq that the Islamic State had ordered the "circumcision" (AKA, female genital mutilation, FGM) of all women and girls in and … Continue reading IS isn’t requiring female genital mutilation, but that kind of sounds like something they’d do

A planned protest in Ramallah against the ongoing Israeli action in Gaza, which was supposed to march into Jerusalem via the Qalandia checkpoint, has turned into what Buzzfeed is calling "the largest West Bank protests in years." Reuters is calling it the largest protest in the West Bank since the 2000-2005 Second Intifada. Details are … Continue reading West Bank erupts; are we on the brink of a third intifada?

It's past time for the death penalty to go on indefinite hiatus. It's sad enough that the company we're keeping on the "executing criminals" front is China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. It's deplorable enough that we know to a certainty that people have been put to death in this country for crimes they … Continue reading This is not the act of a civilized nation

In case you missed it, and chances are you did, Sunday's "Meet the Press" finally established once and for all that Senator Lindsey Graham (What? Lindsey Graham on a Sunday morning TV show? How unusual!) is perhaps the keenest foreign policy mind this country has ever produced: However, when Senator Graham shared his critical thoughts … Continue reading The Lindsey Graham foreign policy playbook, at LobeLog