May 2013
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“The missile hits, and after the smoke clears there’s a crater there and you can...”
– Former drone operator Brandon Bryant, on his first drone strike.
Bryant quit the drone program after realizing its disregard for life and how numb strikes made him feel, saying he “couldn’t do it anymore.”
(via hipsterlibertarian)
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“One of the greatest threats to liberty has been the government taking...”
– Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), speaking to Attorney General Eric Holder at a Congressional Hearing.
To be fair, the most DOJ could do is refuse to enforce federal marijuana laws in jurisdictions where state law conflicts with federal law. That’s because it raises a constitutional question...
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Reddit restores 87yo Grandad's Navy Photo | reddit... →
via The Daily What:
Back in April, at the request of his 87-year-old grandfather, Redditor stevieboy1984 turned to the /r/PicRequests subreddit to see if anyone could clean up a scanned JPEG image file of his grandfather’s World War II-era photo taken during his service in the Navy as a submarine sonar/radar operator. After a number of people offered their photoshop wizardries to help its...
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Charges dropped against Florida teen over amateur... →
Good to see the D.A. came to their senses. This young woman never deserved to be treated this way.
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“Evoking the spy games of the Cold War, Russia said Tuesday that it had detained...”
– ‘Spirit of the Cold War’: Russia says US diplomat was trying to recruit for CIA
Oh boy. Let’s not start that old thing up again.
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“If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness.”
– A phrase that was carved on the walls of a concentration camp cell during WWII by a Jewish prisoner (via onlytheilluminatisurvive)
(source)
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The "Jewish" Sticker, Israel, And Democratic...
Palestinian-Israeli celebrity Mira Awad recently wrote a post on her facebook account about the patronizing experience of receiving a “Jewish” sticker on her passport at Ben-Gurion airport. Ami Kaufman helpfully translated Awad’s post into English:
So, I was checked at the airport, they asked the questions, put the stickers on, and I proceeded to the X-Ray machine. Suddenly,...
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Personal Notes: Mother's Day
I just wanted to take some time to join the chorus of individuals praising their mothers today. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the love and support of my mother. While I have plenty of friends and close relatives, she is the only person I know who calls me every week just to see how I’m doing. The sheer amount of money alone she has spent on me, both as a child and as an...
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The Good, The Bad, And Charles Ramsey
One of mankind’s strongest propensities is the desire to classify people into neat categories. Categories helps us organize our lives into predictable patterns, and help us manage risk. Stereotypes often have their genesis in an unwitting attempt to classify human behavior so as to minimize one’s exposure to risk. Unfortunately, history has taught that when people relying on these...
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Syria Is Not Iraq →
The comments on this Pro-intervention Op-Ed by Bill Killer (h/t atidd) are giving me a bit more faith that people “get” the problem with intervention in Syria. It appears that more than a decade of War has finally begun to make people weary of military intervention, however well-intentioned. Here’s a few examples:
So we eliminate Assad’s ability to retaliate against its...
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“From 2003 when I walked through hospital wards and saw children dying of...”
– Donna Mulhearn, via Kelley B. Vlahos’ recent article, “Iraq’s Generation Hell.”
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Should The U.S. Intervene In Syria, Ctd.
thecliffsatetretat replied to your post: Should The U.S. Intervene In Syria?
“… when the U.S. commits military forces to a foreign conflict, we necessarily have moral responsibility for the results.” Does that mean that not intervening carries no moral responsibility for the results?
I think the best way to think about this is to consider the following situation.
Let us suppose that I see a...
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Should The U.S. Intervene In Syria?
thecallus recently wrote some reflections on Syria that I wanted to expand on a bit in light of recent events in that country. He writes:
I was going to write some long thing about how Syria shows the limitations of foreign policy based on human rights. The conceit was that there isn’t a choice of good or bad in this case from a human rights perspective, and that the decision the world has to...
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“I considered the arrival to Cuba a blessing, and so I told my brothers, “Since...”
– Mohamedou Ould Slahi, The Guantanamo Memoirs
Necessary reading, if you haven’t already.
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BREAKING: Israel Launches Airstrikes Into Syria →
jakke:
letterstomycountry:
And the U.S. gets dragged into yet another non-essential conflict in 3…2…1…
Wellll I’d be more inclined to agree with LTMC’s comment if this was a novel event. But from the same article:
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly acknowledged the January airstrike inside Syria in a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Tel Aviv on...
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BREAKING: Israel Launches Airstrikes Into Syria →
And the U.S. gets dragged into yet another non-essential conflict in 3…2…1…
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“Brain-imaging techniques are identifying physical deformations and functional...”
– Arian Raine, The Criminal Mind
Next stop: Minority Report dystopia.
h/t NACDL
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“[W]hen we launch in a territory the Bittorrent traffic drops as the Netflix...”
– Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix (via laliberty)
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Buzzfeed: 27 Things You had To Deal With As The... →
This is a really excellent article, and you should read it, regardless of your racial identity.
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Last 15 Rhinos Shot In Mozambique For Their Horns →
:(
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“Well that’s an upsetting primary source.”
– While this comment was in reference to this morning’s letter requesting the National Guard’s assistance at Kent State, you could probably say that about many of our posts. But these comments are an opportunity we hate to miss. Sometimes history is upsetting (a lot of the time, actually). This is...
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Meg Lanker-Simons Cited For Making UW Crushes Post →
shortformblog:
prettayprettaygood:
University of Wyoming Police have issued a citation to Meg Lanker-Simons for a charge of interference. According to the citation “Subject admitted to making a controversial post on UW Crushes webpage and then lied about not doing it.”
An anonymous statement posted to the UW Crushes Facebook page last week caused a controversy. The post stated that the...
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What the $%^& Does It Take To Be A Good Muslim In...
Via Brooklyn Mutt, I encountered this story about a cab driver who was recently attacked by one of his customers. Mohamed Salim is an Army Reservist and an Iraq veteran. He also happens to be a Muslim, which is a bad thing to be in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings:
An Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a cabdriver says a passenger he picked up early Friday at a Northern...
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Ice cream man to rival: 'I own this town' →
Not the Onion. Can’t make this stuff up.
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Courage, Cowardice, And Terrorism
Ari Kohen has a thoughtful piece up regarding the Boston Bomber that addresses a common notion: that people who commit acts of terror are, by-in-large, “cowards.”
Ari takes note of a blurb from Bill Maher, who rejected the notion that the people who flew planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 could possibly be defined as cowards. Given that all rational human beings have a fear of...
April 2013
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“I continue to believe that we’ve got to close Guantanamo. I think it is critical...”
– The President got very quotable today as he renewed his call for Guantanamo to close.
Of course, actually DOING the right thing »»» quotable.
(via hipsterlibertarian)
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“Among the more serious arguments against liberalizing immigration is that it can...”
– Daniel T. Griswold, Cato Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
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“As an original member of Homeland Security who worked for both CBP and ICE, I...”
– Jamie Haase, Former Special Agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations.
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“Leo Branton Jr., a California lawyer whose moving closing argument in a racially...”
– Leo Branton Jr., Activists Lawyer, Dies at 91
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Why Government Spending Is So Hard To Cut
One of the reasons why Government spending is so hard to cut is because people do actually rely on it for one reason or another. Whether it occurs through transfer payments (i.e. benefits) or funding someone’s job, Government spending does actually make a difference in people’s lives.
One can see this in the implementation of the sequester. I recently had the honor and privilege...
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“My daughter is already growing up in a society in which illegal drugs are easier...”
– Tony O’Neill
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Chris Arnade Photography: Destiny Sanchez →
arnade:
Fifteen-year-old Destiny Sanchez was found dead the morning following Thanksgiving, her body covered in bleach. She had been strangled and possibly raped. She was found in the inner landing of a building where her father’s girlfriend’s sister lived. The media descended on Hunts…
LTMC: Follow Chris Arnade. He uses his tumblr to document the lives of the residents of...
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Man Dies in Police Raid on Wrong House →
A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house. Police admitted their mistake, saying faulty information from a drug informant contributed to the death of John Adams Wednesday night.
Bad information from a drug informant? Why, that never happens!
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An Economy Of Error?
Lynn Stuart Parramore discusses the work of an economics grad student who recently blew the lid off Reinhart and Rogoff’s infamous study concluding that a 90% or higher GDP-to-debt ratio results in dramatic reductions in economic growth:
Since 2010, the names of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous in political and economic circles. These two Harvard economists wrote a...
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On Reblogging vs. Starting A Brand New Post
This is a concern that came up recently, and it seems worth addressing. I wanted to explain why in some cases, when I’m quoting material from another Tumblr user, I start a new post with a hat-tip or linked name attribution rather than simply reblogging the post.
There are a number of potential issues associated with reblogging that prevent people from interacting profitably with the...
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“In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be...”
– The National Counter Terrorism Center’s 2011 Report on Terrorism
(via prettayprettaygood)
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“Even if the American criminal justice system proved 99.5 percent accurate, it...”
– C.R. Huff et al., Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy (1996).
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Americans Are as Likely to Be Killed by Their Own... →
prettayprettaygood:
The number of U.S. citizens who died in terrorist attacks increased by two between 2010 and 2011; overall, a comparable number of Americans are crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year. This is not to diminish the real—albeit shrinking—threat of terrorism, or to minimize the loss and suffering of the 13,000 killed and over 45,000 injured around the world....
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Some Brief Legal Commentary On The Decision Not To...
DOJ has indicated that they will not be Mirandizing the Marathon bombing suspect for now, invoking the public safety exception established by New York v. Quarles. Here’s what the public safety exception is, and what it isn’t.
The public safety exception is an exception to the general rule from Miranda v. Arizona that police must inform a Defendant of their right to remain silent, and...
