Make Mine a Manhattan

It seems that an honorary member of the Crow tribe has just signed on with the Black Helicopter brigade and is readying — now, as I write, in some secure undisclosed location (Berchtesgaden?) — the documents of transfer that will (at last!) restore its traditional owners to their rightful enjoyment of just a tiny piece [...]

Really, Teacher. I Read the Assignment. The Marvel Comics Version.

Cross Posted at Balloon Juice I don’t usually bother reading anything Conor Friedersdorf has to say. While it is fun to watch in a kind of rooting-for-injuries kind of way, there are only so many times one can sit through the wrecks of his attempts to redefine the word “conservative” as the actual state of [...]

…Til It’s Gone

(Cross-posted at Balloon Juice) This is a follow up to John Cole’s Thug Nation observation. He’s right, of course: we’ve allowed our fears, and the cynical manipulation of those night sweats, to lead us to surrender rights and values that a decade ago we might have thought untouchable. It is funny – in a tragic [...]

Captain’s Blog: Gulf of Mexico Oil Damage/Worse Than You Thought update

In blogging, as in much else, marrying well can make life a lot easier. Case in point: Through marriage to my wife I gained cousinhood with Captain Peter Wilcox, who at this point in an adventurous, well-lived life, is master of the Greenpeace ship M.V. Arctic Sunrise. Which means that because of the family connection, [...]

Marijuana Nukes or Why We Miss Adult Republicans

Cross-posted at Balloon Juice Just what you want in that first email check waiting for the shower to heat up.*  That would be the item in this morning’s email feed from Harvard’s news office featuring loose-nuke expert Graham Allison and his panel on the future of nuclear weapons that I missed in meat-space last Wed. [...]