Obama, bin Laden, and Seymour Hersh

President Obama and the national security state have reaped great political rewards from the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. It enabled him to run for re-election on the swagger of ordering a bold raid to do what his predecessor could not do. It enabled the CIA and the NSA to claim that their clever sleuthing was what enabled the US to locate bin Laden in Pakistan. It justified the use of torture by claiming that this was what got them vital information. And it enabled the US military and its much vaunted Special Forces to glory in successfully going in, carrying out a raid in a foreign country under the noses of that government, and then get out again without that country’s military being any the wiser. Even Obama’s political adversaries had no counter to vice-president Joe Biden’s boast during the 2012 campaign that it was thanks to Obama that “General Motors is alive and bin Laden is dead.”
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I’ll bet Ted Cruz never expected the Spanish Inquisition

Texas senator Ted Cruz, one of the many contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, is one of the most obnoxious people around. Even his colleagues in his own party seem disgusted with his arrogant, preening, headline-hogging antics. So that raises the question as to whether it would be ever possible for him to come off as a sympathetic figure in an exchange with anyone.
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Cuba’s lung cancer vaccine and other medical breakthroughs

Those who follow Cuba know that despite the harsh embargo that the US has imposed on that nation for over 50 years out of sheer spite because it is no longer a US client state, that country has managed to maintain a free universal health care system that is even able to send nurses and doctors to other developing countries in the world and to deal with emergencies, such as the recent Ebola outbreak in west Africa when it sent hundreds of medical professionals.
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Winning legally but losing politically and vice versa

By the end of June, there will be two rulings by the US Supreme Court that will have wide-ranging consequences. One involves Obamacare and deals with whether the subsidies provided by the exchanges set up by the federal government in those states that chose not to set up their own is constitutional. The other deals with same-sex marriage and involves two issues: whether states can ban same-sex marriages and whether they can refuse to recognize those conducted in other states.
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The high price paid by others for our cheap clothes

I was at a party some time ago and the hosts brought out some photographs from a previous party and there was some amusement because I was wearing the same sweater on both occasions. This did not bother me because I like that sweater and wear it as often as I can. In fact, my policy concerning clothes is to buy a few that I like and wear them over and over until they get frayed and have holes in them, and then I wear them around the house. In fact, as I write this, my shirt has a hole in the right elbow that is hidden by a sweater.
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Russ Feingold seeks to regain US Senate seat in Wisconsin

Russ Feingold has just announced that he is seeking to regain the Wisconsin US Senate seat that he won in 1992 and lost in 2010 in that Republican wave election. I think he has a good chance to do so since Ron Johnson, the person who replaced him, seems vulnerable and the negative effects of Republican governor Scott Walker’s policies are likely to become highly manifest in 2016, hurting the Republican brand. Recent polls support that view.
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Ordinary people doing extraordinary things: The amazing story of the people who broke into an FBI office and exposed its crimes

On March 8, 1971 some people broke into the FBI offices in Media, PA, stole all the files, and then released to the media those that blew the lid off all manner of outrageous and illegal activities that the FBI was engaged in to spy on and harass and even murder people in the anti-war and civil rights movements. I wrote about this back in January 2014, when some finally came forward to identify themselves as the ones who carried out the burglary.
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