How have I not seen this movie yet? “I am an Islamist/I am an anti-Christ” might be the punkest lyric ever written, way more punk than the way that lyric read the first time around. Thanks, Latoya Peterson for reminding me of this, and Erica Sackin for IMing me the link.

Looping back to the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review,  one of the decisions that document deferred was about the future of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The NPR figured that NATO’s forthcoming report on its new Strategic Concept was the right venue for determining if Europe (specifically, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Germany) should [...]

Ross Douthat has a response to Peter Beinart that suffers from a bit of mirror imaging. What I wonder is whether the trend that Beinart describes — the diminishing bond between secular American Jews and the state of Israel — was more or less inevitable, no matter what policies were pursued in Israel and what [...]

David Barno, the former Army three-star commander of the Afghanistan war turned CNAS fellow, writes up a recent Army wargame for Tom Ricks’ blog. There’s good stuff in there about how Gen. Dempsey and Brig. Gen. McMaster want the Army to focus what it anticipates will be lean-years budgeting for 2014-2019 around keeping the Iraq/Afghanistan [...]

I have to pretend to be an elections reporter this morning, so I don’t have the time to respond to some of this stuff in the depth it deserves, but I’ll try to circle back later today. All this is Beinart-related. First, Sean from Human Province has a complex post making two points. The first, [...]

When not fucking his aide behind his wife’s back, Mark Souder didn’t like those — like Centers for Disease Control STD expert Dr. Jonathan Zenilman — who advocated for the responsible usage of contraceptive devices. This is from a 2004 exchange. Zenilman: Teenagers having consensual intercourse or adults having sexual intercourse is not the same [...]

If you’ve liked my post-Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab reporting on the National Counterterrorism Center — in particular this post and this piece and this piece — then you’re really going to like the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on Abdulmutallab. There’s blame attributed to the CIA and the NSA and the State Department. But it’s [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 406-10 May 18, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Cpl. Nicholas D. Paradarodriguez, 29, of Stafford, Va., died May 16 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine [...]

So my new friend Carol Rosenberg, the world’s leading authority on Guantanamo Bay, had a brief window of time in which she was cleared to speak about being banned from Guantanamo. Luckily, she did an interview with On The Media during that period. CAROL ROSENBERG: I guess what maybe you’re asking is whether the people [...]

Tomorrow in the House Armed Services Committee. Marking up next year’s Defense Department authorization. A completely obscure provision within the Afghanistan war money contains the cash to close the detention facility at Guantanamo. Strip it out and the prospects for closing the place get bleak. If it survives, then a plan that civil liberties groups [...]