jennkepka

So, by training, I’m a fiction writer. Yep, I make stuff up and have the degree to prove it. Fun, right? When I look at war reporting, I’m often interested in the narrative construction of the stories we tell and the stories we hear, and how that affects our absorption of what’s going on. There’s [...]

Here’s something I’ve been puzzling over. Five years ago, the U.S. military was having trouble meeting its recruitment quotas. In 2005, the GAO reported that “three of the eight active and reserve components missed their goals.” In 2006, the Army considered expanding the number of non-citizens who could serve in order to meet its goals. [...]

What a week for a computer crash, right? You miss a single day here and you miss some great talk. I’m still catching up. Anyway, as part of my news-catch up today I read this announcement from the U.S. Army about Apps for the Army, an “application-development challenge… used to help the service more quickly [...]

David Evans from Bloomberg had a piece over the weekend with a disturbing discovery: the families of U.S. soldiers killed in action are getting ripped off by big insurance companies. Since 1999, the VA has allowed Prudential to send survivors “checkbooks” tied to its Alliance Account. In 2009 alone, the families of U.S. soldiers and [...]

So Admiral Mike Mullen said on “Meet the Press” this weekend that military plans exist for a strike against Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Anyone reading along for the last, say, year won’t be surprised to find this out. Like Matt Yglesias, I’m unimpressed that these plans exist, and I think it’s [...]

Well, I’ll be the second volunteer to poke my head up and say hello. (Hello). I’m Jenn, and I basically threw my hands up in the air like a dorky girl in history class until Spencer called on me, from the comments, and let me play along. You can find me most days at my [...]