Part of my duties as a CITIZEN JOURNALIST is to ask the kinds of questions that traditional journalists refuse to ask. Which is why, having learned of the University of Colorado’s hiring of a new “vice chancellor for diversity, equity and community engagement,” I hopped on my bike (which, in turns out, was unnecessary — seems Boulder still allows cars, and is, in fact, as larded up with them as

“Marine’s Charges Dropped in Iraq Deaths,” AP: A general dropped all charges Thursday against a Marine who had been accused of killing three Iraqi brothers in response to a roadside bomb attack in Haditha in 2005. “The evidence does not support a referral to a court-martial,” Lt. Gen. James Mattis wrote in his written decision. Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, 22, had been charged with the murder in the deaths

The “nutters,” they play unfairly. By, like, consulting experts on their own. And questioning the job done by TNR’s “fact checkers”. Which is not their job: BAE System’s Head of Communications over the division than manufactures the Bradley IFV was never specifically asked to comment on the claims made in “Shock Troops” by TNR’s legion of fact-checkers. When he saw the claims made in “Shock Troops,” he stated, by citing

Here’s how ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero characterizes the recent Congressional vote on the NSA “wireless surveillance” program: Democratic “leaders” have crossed the line and betrayed the will of the majority who put them in power in 2006. This week, a timid Congress caved in to President Bush and his demand for more out-of-control authority to spy on Americans. Caved. To Chimperor’s demand that he be allowed to act “out

From the New Criterion, “Lying For the Truth” (Nov 1993): The thirst for moral justification for one’s life in the world is one of our deepest needs, one of our most powerful and essentially human drives, ignored at our cost and peril. In his “Innocents’ Clubs,” Münzenberg provided two generations of people on the left with what we might call the forum of righteousness. More perhaps than any other person

…to Michael Kasun for the Zappa You Are What You Is CD. I plan on loading it onto my iPod later today and giving it a thorough going over. Before that, though, I have to go sweat my way through Kenpo in the hopes that someday I’ll be able to get my foot up near my head. Sure, it’s easier to put it in my mouth that way. But it’s

The DoJ has decertified Pinnacle’s Dragon Skin body armor, “a severe blow to Pinnacle’s campaign to have Dragon Skin fielded by the US Army,” notes Hot Air’s Byran Preston, “and put into service in combat”: Pinnacle had previously used NIJ certification as evidence that Dragon Skin is of sufficient quality to be used in combat. That line of argument is now taken away. For the record, NIJ certification standards and

From Anthony H. Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies: From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq’s ability