Remember how Mike Allen and Evan Thomas told us that Rick Perry looked like a blithering idiot in the 2012 GOP primary debates because he was tripping on painkillers for his bad back the whole time? Well, uh, is he back on the pills? Perry said that he was “stunned” and claimed that the president, … Continue reading Is Rick Perry back on painkillers?

For a short while over the weekend it looked like we might all be witness to the rarest of things, an actual case of justice being done. Omar al-Bashir, who's been "president" of Sudan since 1989 (after 26 years, it's probably safe to call him a dictator, yes?), was legally detained while attending the African … Continue reading Sudan’s Bashir free to commit more war crimes

Magna Carta is 800 years old today. On June 15, 1215, King John and a group of rebellious English barons reached agreement on a charter that limited royal authority with respect to the nobility in exchange for the nobles swearing their loyalty to the crown and ending their rebellion. In its original form, the charter … Continue reading Happy, uh, Magna Carta Day (?)

It should go without saying that this is a good idea: The House of Representatives has unanimously approved an amendment to the U.S. military budget, proposed by Conyers and Florida Republican Ted Yoho, banning support and training for "the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia 'Azov Battalion.'" Azov was set up in May 2014 to fight pro-Russian separatists … Continue reading BREAKING: Congress elects not to train and fund Neo-Nazis

I won't pretend to understand the implications of the massive hack of OPM, particularly not when the government's story about what actually got hacked seems to be changing from day to day, but they seem to be pretty terrible. The latest story is that a second hack managed to compromise security clearance paperwork, which means … Continue reading Too big to govern

Fareed Zakaria had that whole dust-up a while back (well, and a while before that too) on account of how so much of what he his interns write tends to be straight jacked from some other, less famous writer. In all fairness RE: my headline above, I obviously have no way of knowing whether or … Continue reading Maybe Fareed should go back to plagiarizing

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (behind a paywall; here's a summary) that Taliban commanders in Afghanistan are getting money and weapons from Iran. This is newsworthy in that, as has been pretty well-documented, after 9/11 Iran went to some effort to aid the US in taking down the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This appears to … Continue reading Iran and the Taliban: not-so-strange bedfellows

Here's a strange story. Just a couple of weeks ago, Jabhat al-Nusra's leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, told Al Jazeera and anybody listening that he and his men were not looking to cause trouble with religious minorities like the Alawites, as long as those minorities weren't looking to cause trouble with Nusra. Sure, Nusra has massacred … Continue reading Nusra’s moderate face

Nigeria's so-new-he-still-has-that-new-president-smell President Muhammadu Buhari reached a deal today with four of his neighbors -- Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Benin -- to create a multi-national military force tasked with putting Boko Haram out of everybody's misery. This is a good idea, at least in principle; Boko Haram may have its roots in northeast Nigeria, but … Continue reading Nigeria’s good idea, maybe

Yesterday the Guardian published a really interesting piece, by Spencer Ackerman, Shiv Malik, Ali Younes and Mustafa Khalili, on the degree to which ISIS's rise has really decimated Ayman al-Zawahiri's Al-Qaeda Central: According to Maqdisi, al-Qaida’s organisational structure has “collapsed”. Zawahiri, Maqdisi said, “operates solely based on allegiance. There is no organisational structure. There is … Continue reading Has ISIS all but buried Al-Qaeda?