IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 070-10 January 26, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualties The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of three Marines who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. The following Marines died Jan. 24 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan: Sgt. Daniel M. Angus, 28, of Thonotosassa, Fla. Lance Cpl. Timothy J. Poole, [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 069-10 January 26, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Lance Cpl. Jeremy M. Kane, 22, of Towson, Md., died Jan. 23 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 4th Light Armored [...]

I’m just pulling shit at random from last year’s DHS budget request. This is what doesn’t get frozen under the Obama administration: An increase of $64 million is requested to modernize vetting infrastructure data management, adjudication workflow, and integration of all vetting systems in the third and final phase of the Vetting Infrastructure Improvement Plan. [...]

I got this chart from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment’s Todd Harrison’s brand-new paper on the imminent Fiscal 2011 defense budget. (Conveniently released today!) As you can see, all this chart details is spending on aircraft. In last year’s budget, that spending represented 5 percent of the budget, or between $38.6 billion and [...]

I crunch the results of several recent polls in this pre-SOTU Washington Independent piece. And I just want to make clear that while on balance I’m on board with Obama’s foreign policy, I don’t pretend that “popular” is the same thing as “meritorious.”

Let me quote this comparison between the Pentagon and General Motors, as excerpted in a previous Windy post: In GM’s case, its market share rapidly eroded as gas prices climbed higher, the economy slowed, and consumers turned to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. GM found itself building a fleet of SUVs and trucks that consumers did [...]

Excerpts of Amb. Karl Eikenberry’s November cables warning about Hamid Karzai’s unreliability as an ally and cautioning against increasing U.S. forces in Afghanistan leaked to the Times and the Post. Today the Times runs them in full. You should read them. According to the paper’s Eric Schmitt, the leaker wants “the historical record” to include [...]

A man of simple pleasures and many annoyances, I find myself at the junction of them all when it comes to enjoying my record collection. At the end of a hard day, I want to play one of my beloved vinyl albums, or even music I have yet to purchase on vinyl, as I read [...]

After insulting the way my mother talks, you have to cut an ad that shows you saving up to fawty puhsen on your home heating bill this winter thanks to Fiberama’s second-to-none craftsmanship. This could be your “It’s the people’s seat!” moment.

A conservative friend of mine attended the 2000 Republican convention and noted how in the depths of a Philadelphia summer there was a ubiquity of Chinos. That caused us to think there were a limited supply of Republican Chinos, catalogued by size, and those who wanted to wear them had to queue up or sign [...]