One part of President Obama's address that seems to have stuck in some craws is the bit where he compared "The Islamic State" to "The Holy Roman Empire": Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. … Continue reading Is the Islamic State “Islamic”? Why does it matter?

Today being what it is, I'm likely going to pack it in after this post and turn off all the noise for a while. But here are a couple of other things to keep in mind (apart from the reaction I had last night) as the Obama administration's plan for taking on the Islamic State … Continue reading A couple more important points on last night’s speech

My latest piece at LobeLog is a favor to you fine readers. See, former VP Richard Cheney headed to the warm, friendly confines of the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, and like Frank Costanza at Festivus, he's got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're gonna hear about it. While studiously ignoring the … Continue reading In which I watch a Dick Cheney speech so you don’t have to

So having had a chance to think about it a little (and to read the transcript, because man am I a bad liveblogger), I've got a few thoughts on President Obama's IS speech from earlier tonight: The Islamic State isn't an immediate threat to the US right now, but it could be someday, which means … Continue reading Feeling feels about Obama’s speech

Since I am not one of those important journalist types who gets copies of this kind of thing in advance, I'm going to try liveblogging the thing because, well, why not, I guess? I'm trying out this liveblogging thing that I've never used before, so if it's all a giant fail blame this whole technology-mad … Continue reading Liveblogging (?) the big Obama ISIS speech

This is pretty much the last straw: According to the Billings Gazette, heavy rains late last month in Idaho and Montana—the nation's two largest malt-barley producing states—caused much of the unharvested barley still in the field to sprout, rendering it useless except as animal feed. That means that the price of beer will likely rise … Continue reading You know what? Just bring on the meteor

In technical terms, this seems pretty freaking cool: Researchers uncovered 17 new chapels and hundreds of archaeological features around the neolithic standing stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, including forms of monuments that have never been seen before. Brought together for the first time in a digital map of the historic site, the discoveries transform how … Continue reading Stonehenge just a lot bigger, and even more interesting

Haider al-Abadi is officially the Prime Minister of Iraq, which is good news in the "anybody but Maliki" sense even though it's obviously way too early to say how Abadi will perform on the job. His government is in place, or at least most of it is, except for two minor positions: Iraqi lawmakers urged … Continue reading Iraq has a government, sort of

Senator Mark Kirk, of my former home state, he's totally down with tax inversions, that thing where a company buys another company located in a lower tax country and then "relocates" there to shirk US taxes. Corporations have to be allowed to do whatever their executives determine to be in the best interests of the … Continue reading Mark Kirk’s priorities

In a shocking turn of events, Congress is probably going to fail to do its job for only the infinity-eth time since 2011 (or thereabouts, I'm not being picky): Mr. Obama’s meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders on Tuesday in the Oval Office will be the first of several between White House officials and lawmakers … Continue reading The invisible branch of government