This is presumably the first response to the discovery of the dead Israeli teens earlier today. I can't find anybody covering it on TV, but reports are coming in via Twitter, and it sounds massive and indiscriminate: Explosion after explosion after explosion. Not sure what the targets are, but this is bad #Gaza — Just … Continue reading Gaza being bombed right now

The Israeli army has reportedly found, near Hebron, the bodies of three Israeli teens who disappeared on June 12. This would obviously be a tragedy under any circumstances. But in these particular environs, the deaths of these three kids, and the three Palestinians who have been killed since the abduction in Israeli army raids around … Continue reading A tragedy that will only get more tragic

When I was a kid, I was the kind of dweeb who said "Supreme Court Justice" instead of "astronaut" or "quarterback" when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was too young to understand that I'd have to go through law school and, worse, probably be an actual lawyer … Continue reading The Supreme Court’s power really might be limitless

Actually, "back" is the wrong word, it's more like "the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history," per Vox: The outbreak has now hit three countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. And the virus — which starts off with flu-like symptoms and often ends with horrific hemorrhaging — has infected about 600 people and killed an estimated … Continue reading Ebola’s back, in case you thought things were going too well around the world

Peter Beinart is still real sorry about that whole Iraq War that he pushed a decade or so ago, and he gets why it's upsetting ("infuriating" is the word he uses) to see the same gang of incompetent ideologues who caused Iraq to fall apart in the first place being invited back on TV to … Continue reading SENSIBLE FOREIGN POLICY LIBERALS–ASSEMBLE!

Ezra Klein has an interesting take on Hillary Clinton's several recent gaffe-ish incidents, from her on-air tussle with Terry Gross to her tone-deaf attempts to portray her and Bill as just regular middle class folks. He thinks they're all happening by design, or rather that Clinton's book tour has been designed to let her get … Continue reading How many trial runs does a person need?

When ISIS and Al-Qaeda Central agreed to disagree a couple of months ago, it was about who gets to call the shots in the global jihad network. You get a lot of western media talking about how ISIS was "too extreme" for AQC, and it's true that excessive violence against fellow Muslims was one of … Continue reading ISIS can’t help itself, but dealing with it is only the first step

This New York Times piece reflects pretty well just how quickly things changed in Ukraine today. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who for a couple of days has been making positive noises about Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's proposed cease-fire with rebels in Donbas, actually asked his parliament to repeal its March 1 resolution authorizing the use … Continue reading Almost a small breakthrough in Ukraine

Between spending most of last week feeling like I was dying of the Spanish Flu, playing host to our neighbor's dog all weekend (which I of course treated like we were a five-star dog resort in danger of getting a bad review on dog Yelp instead of just letting the dog do its own thing), … Continue reading You get a cookie, part 11 of ???: Dov Charney, former CEO of American Apparel

It didn't take long to identify one: Wearing a flak jacket with a pistol on his hip, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), Arshad Salihi, announced yesterday the mobilisation of a new Turkmen militia in the city of Kirkuk, saying that if the Kurdish Peshmerga forces "refuse to return Kirkuk [to the Iraqi … Continue reading What’s the next potential fault line in Iraq?