President Obama's speech on his counterterrorism policies may be his last, best chance to establish a solid foundation for the extraordinary actions he's ordered as the commander-in-chief. Legitimacy and sustainability are his watchwords. But those who follow this subject closely will be watching to see how he addresses several difficult questions, including how the executive branch can possibly hold itself accountable when secret military operations go devastatingly wrong. Repeating his mantras from past speeches won't speak to the rising concerns among lawmakers and American citizens about his policies. Promising transparency without sacrificing any power or claim to power will be too easy. (The disclosure today that four Americans have been killed is a good first step, as is the Attorney General's acknowledgement that three of them were ...  More»

Here's another extraordinary document release from Nate Jones of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. His research details, for the first time publicly, the NATO nuclear command post exercise called Able Archer, which was the culmination of a months-long effort to test NATO ground and air warfighting capabilities in Europe. Jones' work makes it clear that the Soviets were alarmed when the U.S. physically transferred more than 10,000 troops to Europe as part of the exercise. From a military standpoint, practicing rapid pre-deployment makes sense. But if your enemy is already interpreting your moves as the precursor to a first strike, it can be quite dangerous. Add to that the nuclear component, which involved actual nuclear aircraft, practice alerts, practice code validations and more....  More»

Howard Stern has hosted a TV show or two, and I'm sure that several major networks have pitched him other ideas. Here's a pitch that won't require much money to execute and would produce incredibly compelling television. Acquire the rights to the interviews that Stern conducts on his SiriusXM radio show, find a cable network, and re-run them. No sketches, bits, or anything silly. Just the interviews. Whatever else Howard Stern is good at, and as a long-time fan, I think he's a maestro of many things, he is sublime as an interviewer of celebrities.

The reason why he's so good is because he is insanely curious. I'm sure he can find a psychoanalytic root for his intense desire to know things, but his audience is all the better for it. Not only is he curious: he is curious in the right way....  More»

The might and reach of the federal government can be hard to fathom at times, and often individual citizens find themselves overwhelmed by the threat of coercive power and bureaucratic excessiveness.

I mean, how can one person confront the IRS? The National Security Agency? The White House? Instead of acting, or taking responsibility for self-governing, it's much easier to simply go passive and listen, isn't it? We'll go on a website that drives traffic to itself, or listen to a radio talk show host spin up elaborate conspiracy theories. We take satisfaction knowing that someone with a voice is also outraged at whatever we are outraged about.

Actually, there are a number of things you can do. You don't have to be a techno-utopian to see how two facets of the information age, access to a lot of information and access to a lot of people, can serve...  More»

Able Archer 83 was a NATO nuclear command post exercise that the Russians almost mistook for the real thing — a U.S. first strike. And when President Reagan learned about this, it stuck on his conscience. It may have been a turning point in the Cold War. About the same time as Able Archer, Reagan received his first briefing of the nuclear war plans, and was told that a winnable nuclear war would cost at least 60 million lives. And he watched, along with millions of Americans, a made-for-TV movie about the horrific aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse.

Today, Nate Jones at the National Security Archive at George Washington University has published a treasure trove of previously classified documents about the frenetic months leading up to Able Archer, including the handwritten notes of a conversation that former U....  More»

By ABC's definition a scandal is a television show that outdoes itself from week-to-week, and must involve at least one duplicitous betrayal and monumental, earth-shattering cover-up per week, if not per act. 

I think actual Washington suffers from Scandal envy.

On television, Fitz has an affair with his long-time image-maker, the White House chief of staff murders someone, and the mole is... well, I won't spoil it. (Actually, the real scandal in the show is how the chief of staff's boyfriend got his White House correspondent's job in the first place, but I'm just vamping).

In reality, we have Benghazi, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, and the Justice Department's aggressive investigation into a national security leak.

One of those comports roughly with the dictionary definition of a small-s-scandal....  More»

I've given this little puzzle to a bunch of people, and I've gotten all types of responses. 

So:

You wake up one morning, roll over, and slide the snooze lever on your phone. You take a glance, you see the numbers "2721" in the tail end of a text alert from your credit card company.

You'll check it later.

Listening to NPR, or Howard Stern, or a local am radio show, you hear one of the jocks or hosts mention a "27 to 1" scoring spree by the San Antonio Spurs during last night's play-off game.

When you sit down to pour your cereal, your eyes hover over the nutrition label. The cereal has 27 grams of carbs, of which 21 are sugar.

In the car on the way to work, you notice that your odometer reads "2721."

A receipt you crumpled up and left on the driver's seat totals $27....  More»

My first reaction to the AP's disclosure that the Justice Department had subpoenaed two months worth of telephone call records (that is, for a certain number, the identity of the person called, and the duration of the call, as recorded by the telephone company) for 20 personal and professional phone lines leased by both reporters and editors, was one of sympathy for my journalistic kin.

Since May 2012, the Justice Department has been investigating the unauthorized disclosure of classified information that led to an Associated Press article about a failed bomb plot that ended with the U.S. taking custody of an IED bound for America.

On May 7, 2012, the AP ran its story; the perpetrator was in custody over the objections of the White House. Other parts of the national security machine were attempting to pursue the loose ends of the plot to...  More»

Consider the mighty Repubs 

beating Obama with clubs.

but talk of "impeachment"

a grand over-reach-ment

will keep them the party of scrubs. 

A rule of media thermodynamics: For every conservative over-action, there is an equally breathless and ideologically opposite counter-action. If conservatives have become geese that continually lay malformed eggs, progressives are the type to continually sample it and then critique the recipe, even if the point is simply for them to eat something disgusting. 

That means that the idea of impeachment has to be actually entertained, which then means that it becomes a legitimate debate topic on cable news, which will create enough chum in the water for the gaggle to feast on. 

1. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, whose Benghazi hearings have proven only that Benghazi can be covered by the mainstream media,...  More»