Amanda Marcotte has a good piece in TAP about TV’s increasing acceptance of the female nerd. Alas, its case studies are mostly shows I have no interest in watching, like Glee and Bones Ugly Betty. Minor quibble: I don’t really understand how 30 Rock‘s Liz Lemon or Parks & Recreation‘s Leslie Knope really fit in here. [...]

No matter how many times Gen. Petraeus tries not to make news in the D.C. area, I’ll probably attend, and watch the PowerPoint presentation on Centcom’s area of responsibility, because he might say something newsworthy or I might get to ask a question and this is what I get paid to do and enjoy doing. [...]

A friend of mine tweeted earlier today that he didn’t understand why the nuke summit wasn’t held at the Pentagon and my girlfriend asked me the same question maybe an hour ago. I’d submit that it would risk sending the message that 46 heads of state are subordinate to the American military. If you were [...]

Eric Shinseki must have composed and then deleted an angry tweet after reading what Richard Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said about that time Paul Wolfowitz publicly rebuked him: Part of Rumsfeld’s problem, Myers said, was that he had a couple of heavy-handed assistants. He said that defense secretaries and [...]

The decisions by Ukraine, Canada and Chile to divest themselves of huge gobs of high-enriched uranium are Good Things. But with respect to my friend David Dayen, they’re not the real measure of success of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. That success comes during the two years between summits, when nations will either strengthen their [...]

Finally got a chance to read my good friend Eli Lake’s excellent exploration of the legal continuities concerning executive power between the Bush and Obama administrations on counterterrorism. Eli does a particularly good job of locating those continuities within what he calls the “post-2006″ Bush administration — that is, after Congress and the courts rejected [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 289-10 April 12, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Sgt. Sean M. Durkin, 24, of Aurora, Colo. died April 9 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his [...]

He’ll go to Joint Forces Command, so he’s being promoted. So does that mean some post like Marine Corps Commandant will suddenly open up for Gen. Mattis? I don’t happen to know if Commandant is a fixed-term position, but it seems from Wikipedia that commandants serve about four or so years, and that would indicate [...]

Listen to this and tell me it’s not a touching defense of being deliberately mystified by the world, even at the cost of embracing ignorance. (“And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist/ y’all motherfuckers lying/ and getting me pissed.”) Listening to this provides a sense of how a Tea Partier perceives the world, in [...]

Just led Pakistan to arrest another Najibullah Zazi co-conspirator.