[ Posted Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 – 19:00 UTC ]
Federal land is currently being occupied by protestors. Or, according to some, by domestic terrorists. But pigeonholing these guys with either label isn't quite as easy as it might first seem. There's some history here that needs pondering before anyone decides exactly what to call the group and, more importantly, what to do about them. Because it is a little more complicated than it first might seem, at least for those who care about the concepts of fairness and consistency.
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[ Posted Tuesday, December 29th, 2015 – 17:55 UTC ]
America is at war, but it is sometimes hard to tell. Granted, we're in a very limited sort of engagement, but even so the media has largely fallen down on the job of keeping Americans up to date with the war's progress. It's a very slow war, and the media much prefers "shock and awe" style war, to be sure. Even so, the fall of Ramadi should be a lot bigger news than it currently seems to be.
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 – 21:03 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Monday, December 21st, 2015 – 18:50 UTC ]
Today's article has two separate and unrelated parts, I should begin by saying. The first looks at the Republican presidential nomination race, and the second concerns Hillary Clinton and foreign policy. It's impossible to provide any smooth linkage or segue between the two (as the strange headline to this article pretty much proves), so I thought I'd point this out before I begin.
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[ Posted Friday, December 18th, 2015 – 19:24 UTC ]
Welcome to our year-end awards columns!
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[ Posted Tuesday, December 15th, 2015 – 23:33 UTC ]
Once again, welcome to a post-debate column. As always, these are my own snap reactions, uninfluenced by what others are thinking or saying. Also as always, any of the quotes below were hastily jotted down, and may not be word-for-word accurate. That's enough of an introduction, at this point, so let's just dive right in.
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[ Posted Friday, December 11th, 2015 – 17:33 UTC ]
Hillary Clinton is right. Last night, on Seth Meyers's late-night show, Clinton had this to say about Donald Trump's candidacy: "I no longer think he is funny." Earlier in the week, the Huffington Post announced that it was un-banishing Trump from the "Entertainment" section and would now properly cover him under "Politics." Arianna and Hillary are correct -- what started out as a hilarious joke is no longer even the slightest bit funny anymore.
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[ Posted Friday, December 4th, 2015 – 17:26 UTC ]
We took last week off for the holidays, so we've got a lot of ground to cover today. Sadly, this included two terrorist attacks in America, one in Colorado and one in Southern California. The truly sad part is that these mass shootings are becoming so common nowadays that within a few months most people will have forgotten them, as we all focus on fresher, more recent tragedies. Welcome to a very grim "new normal," in other words. Sorry to start off on such a heavy note, but such news is impossible to ignore.
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[ Posted Thursday, December 3rd, 2015 – 18:15 UTC ]
President Barack Obama's job approval rating took a dip downwards in November, to hit a new low point for the entire calendar year. Most of this was due to the panicky reaction the political world had to the Paris terrorist attack. President Obama's reaction to the attacks was fairly muted, spread out over an overseas trip which was followed up by a terse statement (rather than, say, a prime-time Oval Office speech) to America on his strategy for fighting terrorism and the Islamic State.
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[ Posted Monday, November 30th, 2015 – 18:52 UTC ]
Once again, a gunman has killed people for political reasons. Once again, he is described in the mainstream media using words and phrases such as: deranged, mentally disturbed, homicidal, gunman, shooter, criminal, murderer, and lone wolf. He may have been all of that, but one key descriptive word is conspicuously missing from most of the commentary: terrorist. Killing people who don't believe what you believe in order to further your political aims is, indeed, one of the definitions of terrorism. If the suspect involved had recently arrived here from Syria (or anywhere else in the Middle East, really), would the news networks be so cautious about calling him a "terrorist"? I seriously doubt it. In fact, if that were the case, he'd likely be quickly labelled an "Islamic terrorist."
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