The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Green on Blue’: Two U.S. Special Forces Troops Killed in Afghanistan Attack

Posted on | March 11, 2013 | 6 Comments

NBC News reports from Kabul:

Two U.S. service members were killed and at least eight others were injured Monday in a possible insider attack at a special forces site in Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
The shooting occurred at a U.S. special operations outpost in Wardak province in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The shooter, who was dressed in an Afghan military or police uniform, was shot and killed.
“We have two confirmed dead, but the toll could rise,” one U.S. official said.
A senior official in the Afghan Defense Ministry said that at least three Afghans were also killed.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message sent by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. . . .
The shooting occurred during a group meeting or briefing, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said.

The so-called “green on blue” attack came in the wake of Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s harsh criticism of U.S. policy, and after U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s visit to Afghanistan.

UPDATE: Bill Rogio of Long War Journal reports:

An Afghan policeman killed two US soldiers in an attack at a US Special Forces base in Wardak province today. The attack is the second green-on-blue, or insider attack, that has been reported in the past four days.
The International Security Assistance Force confirmed that two US soldiers from the US Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A), the command which many US special  operations forces fall under, were killed by Afghan personnel.
“Two US Forces-Afghanistan service members died in eastern Afghanistan today when an individual wearing an Afghan National Security Forces uniform turned a  weapon on U.S. and Afghan forces,” the  ISAF statement said.
ISAF told The Long War Journal that the attack took place in the Jalrayz district in Wardak, and that two US soldiers were killed and several more were wounded.
The policeman opened fire on US soldiers with a machine gun that was mounted  to the back of a pickup, killing two US soldiers and wounding eight more, according to Pajhwok Afghan News. US soldiers returned fire, killing three Afghan Local Policemen, including the policeman who initiated the attack.

UPDATE: Related news by Philip Bump at Atlantic Wire:

The Department of Defense describes a private conversation between Hagel and Karzai, in which Hagel made similar assurances.

“We did discuss those comments,” the secretary said, responding to a reporter’s question about his meeting with Karzai. “I told the president it was not true that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban in trying to negotiate anything.”
Any negotiation with the Taliban to build peace and political consensus in Afghanistan must come from the Afghan government, Hagel said.

This morning, early reports of another source of tension between the two countries: U.S. troops opened fire on two Afghan civilians as they approached a military convoy. Both men, later identified by the AP as employees of a company that repairs police vehicles, were killed.
The official Defense statement quoted above summarizes the secretary’s trip: “Hagel’s first visit to Afghanistan as secretary has been eventful.” Indeed.


Obama Administration’s Top Legal ‘Experts’ Pwned by Blogger in Australia

Posted on | March 11, 2013 | 18 Comments

Guest Post by “Badger Pundit.”

Illustrating Glenn Reynolds’s “Army of Davids” observation about how the internet enables ordinary but competent people to beat Big Media, Big Government, and other goliaths which formerly enjoyed a near-monopoly over public policy debate even if lacking in competence, back in 2008 an American blogger, Dwight Sullivan, pwned all the attorneys and Justices involved in a U.S. Supreme Court case about the constitutionality of a state executing a criminal defendant for raping a child. After the Court ruled unconstitutional the death penalty for child rape, in part because the federal government (supposedly) does not authorize it, Sullivan pointed out in a blog entry that both the Congress and the President had recently authorized the execution of members of the military who commit child rape. The Court ended up modifying its opinion to correct the error Sullivan pointed out.

Meet Harvard law professor David Barron and Georgetown law professor Martin S. Lederman, the most recent legal “goliaths” to be felled by a blogger:

David Barron

Martin S. Lederman

Barron is graduate of Harvard Law School. Even more impressive, Lederman is a graduate of Yale Law School. Both have impressive professional accomplishments, which together with their contacts within the progressive legal community in 2009 won them high legal posts in the Obama Administration. But even these highly credentialed law professors — Obama’s best and brightest in the field of constitutional law — have now been pwned by law professor blogging from Australia.

As proof, consider this long article published yesterday in the New York Times addressing the legal work that went into the Administration’s decision that it had the constitutional authority to assassinate via a drone strike, rather than capture, a non-combatant U.S. citizen located in a foreign country (i.e., someone who though perhaps plotting harm against U.S. interests, is not presently engaged in an attack). As the article recounts, once the Administration developed an active interest in killing Anwar al-Awlaki (a U.S. citizen hiding in Yemen) in the aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009, in early 2010 Barron and Lederman put together a memo concluding that there was no legal obstacle to using a drone strike to kill al-Awlaki (at least if he proved difficult to capture).

The main commentary so far on this article, for example, by Ann Althouse and Glenn Reynolds, has focused on the hypocrisy angle. Barron and Lederman found themselves in the uncomfortable position of arguing that the war power of the President is broad enough to justify killing rather than capturing a U.S. citizen who had not even been charged with a crime.This position was uncomfortable because just two years earlier they had published more than 250 pages in the Harvard Law Review (see here and here) attacking as unduly broad the Bush Administration’s view of the war power used to justify mere enhanced interrogation (leaving no permanent harm) of captured terrorists who were citizens of foreign countries. As Althouse puts it: “Karma’s a bitch!” She adds: “isn’t it amusing to picture them — somewhere in the secret passageways of power — flop-sweating and frantic over the realization Oh, my God, we’re John Yoo!?”

But beyond the hypocrisy, it should not escape notice how these two towering figures of the progressive legal community were, in their actual analysis of the relevant law, pwned by a blogger. The New York Times article reveals that after completing a legal memorandum which concluded that “Mr. Awlaki was a lawful target” for assassination, Barron and Lederman “grew uneasy . . ., particularly after reading a legal blog that focused on a statute that bars Americans from killing other Americans overseas.” As Marcy Wheeler and others have pointed out, although the New York Times did not credit him by name (or, apparently, even interview him), the person who wrote the blog which made Barron and Lederman uneasy is Kevin Jon Heller, a law professor in Australia.

Kevin Jon Heller

Even though one would think lawyers in America would be somewhat more familiar with American law than a law professor in Australia, it was left to Heller to point out that there’s a statute protecting U.S. citizens from being killed in foreign countries by other U.S. citizens. Just a day after reading in the Washington Post that al-Awlaki had been added to the CIA “hit list” despite being a U.S. citizen, on April 8, 2010, Heller published a blog post, “Let’s Call Killing al-Awlaki What It Is — Murder,” which pointed to the legal problem presented by 18 U.S.C. 1119(b), which reads:

A person who, being a national of the United States, kills or attempts to kill a national of the United States while such national is outside the United States but within the jurisdiction of another country shall be punished as provided under sections 1111, 1112, and 1113.

In reaction to Heller’s blog post (and other concerns), the New York Times article reports, Barron and Lederman devoted months of additional work to the matter of whether al-Awlaki could lawfully be killed, adding dozens of pages to their analysis in an attempt to get around the problem raised by Heller (and other concerns). But based on Professor Heller’s recent analysis of the leaked “White Paper” which summarized the analysis of Barron and Lederman, it does not appear that they ever focused on the key issue — the problem under 18 USC 1119(b) presented by the CIA, which is not part of the military, killing a U.S. citizen in a foreign country.

It appears that Professor Heller is continuing to pwn Barron and Lederman. Just this morning he published a blog post which is highly critical of this key omission in their analysis: “Why the ‘Public Authority’ Defense Does Not Work for the CIA.” The blog post seems quite thorough, and one looks forward to hearing what current Administration officials, and Barron and Lederman (who have returned to teaching), have to say about it. A snippet:

al-Awlaki was killed by the CIA, not by the US military. The White Paper does not discuss whether a CIA drone operator would be entitled to a public-authority defense in a prosecution under the foreign-murder statute; indeed, all of the sources cited in III.C regarding the defense (p. 14) — three classic criminal-law treatises and an old state case — claim that the laws of war entitle a soldier to kill the enemy. They say nothing about the right of anyone else to kill.

So would a CIA drone operator be entitled to a public-authority defense? I don’t see how. . . . I simply fail to understand how the US could argue that a CIA drone operator has the right to kill an American citizen abroad, even one who otherwise qualifies as a legitimate target.

* * *

Because CIA drone operators do not possess the combatant’s privilege, a drone operator does indeed violate federal law when he kills an American citizen abroad — namely, the foreign-murder statute. That is true even though the exact same attack would not be criminal if it was carried out by a drone operator working for the US military. The difference is precisely one of public authority: the military drone operator has it (the combatant’s privilege); the CIA drone operator does not.

One wonders whether the country is in the best of hands if we have to rely on a law professor in Australia to point out to top lawyers in a progressive Administration statutes put in place to limit the ability of Americans to kill each other outside America.

Then again, Professor Heller is no slouch. From a review of his biography, perhaps one should not be surprised that Heller can run circles around Barron and Lederman — for example, he has twice as many advanced degrees (four) as Barron and Lederman have combined, two of them from American universities (an M.A. from Duke and a J.D. from Stanford). Perhaps the Obama Administration needs to cast a wider net in its staffing decisions.

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.11.13

Posted on | March 11, 2013 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
SecDef Hagel Gets Explosive Welcome To Afghanistan

"So we're the problem here? I agree!"

Hagel and Karzai in SEKRIT MEETING

Two bombs kill nineteen on day of Hagel’s arrival
Karzai: “The bombs that were detonated in Kabul and Khost were not a show of force; they were serving America.”


Delhi Gang Rape Suspect Ram Singh Suicides In Solitary Confinement Cell
Prime suspect in brutal rape used own clothes to hang himself

Harvard Administrators Secretly Searched Profs’ E-Mail
Admins were hunting leak to media during cheating scandal



POLITICS
Ass’t AG Perez To Be Named Secretary Of Labor?

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez

Well-known race hustler to be nominated as replacement for Hilda Solis

Navy Clips Blue Angels’ Wings

Drink Sellers Angered By Nanny Bloomberg’s “Suggestion”

Ryan: We’ll See If Obama Outreach Is Serious

Obama Slams New Media, Sucks Up To Lamestream Media At Gridiron Club Dinner

Democrats Eager For Ashley Judd To Enter Kentucky Senate Race…And So Are Republicans

Florida Bill Would Require Anger Management Classes For Ammunition Buyers



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Crude Drops On PRC Industrial Data, Stronger Dollar: NYMEX $91.69, Brent $110.42
PRC On Alert As Inflation Creeps Higher
Kuroda Says Bank Of Japan Will Consider Buying Derivatives
Intrade Shuts Down, Citing Fiscal Irregularities
Dollar Slips Broadly But Gains Against Yen
Japan Machinery Orders Fall 13%
PRC Stock Trading Opens To Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan Residents
Maine Lobster Fishery Certified As Sustainable
Publishers Oppose Amazon’s Bid To Gain Control Of TLDs
Ultima Creator Launches Kickstarter For New RPG
Dad Hacks “Donkey Kong” For Daughter, Creates “Pauline Edition”
Iran Blocks VPNs To Prevent Circumventing Web Censorship
Samsung Dominated PRC Smartphone Market In 2012
Alleged EA Employee Writes Missive, Joins SimCity’s Public Flogging
Seattle Dive Bar Bans Google Glasses



SPORTS
Matt Kenseth Celebrates Birthday With Win At Kobalt Tools 400

The winner!

The winner!

His first win with Joe Gibbs Racing

U.S. Rallies Late To Beat Canada 9-4, Advance In WBC

Hoosiers Rally For Big Ten Title

Penguins Crush Islanders 6-1, Extend Win Streak To Five

Pacers Can’t Beat The Heat, Fall 105-91


Duchene Lifts Avs Over Sharks In OT

Depleted Bucks Hold Off Late Charge By Kings

Repertoire In Mind, Dan Haren Works Inside



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Kelly Osbourne “Doing Fine” After Seizure, Still Hospitalized

Doesn't sound good...

Doesn’t sound good…

Could it be epilepsy?

Rihanna Cancels Boston Concert Due To Laryngitis

Kidney Stones Force Rocker Vince Neil Off Stage

Elle Macpherson’s Engaged!

“Oz” Opens To $80.3 Billion Box Office In North America, $150.2 Million Global Debut

Holly Madison: My Daughter Rainbow Aurora Won’t Be Traumatized By Her Name

Adele To Sing At Michelle Obama’s 50th Birthday Party

“Star Trek Into Darkness” Debuts New Action-Packed Trailer

Mandy Moore Exits ABC Pilot “Pulling”

Lindsay Lohan’s Options: House Arrest Or Jail



FOREIGNERS
Taiwan Anti-Nuclear Protests May Derail $8.9 Billion Power Plant
PRC Fishes 900 Dead Pigs Out Of Shanghai’s Huangpu River
Norks Making Good On Some Threats
Conclave To Elect New Pope Begins Tomorrow
Capriles Will Challenge Venezuelan VP Maduro In Next Month’s Presidential Election
Nigeria’s Ansaru Jihadis Announce Deaths Of Seven Hostages
Captured City A Test For Syrian Rebels
Her Majesty A Champion Of LGBT Rights? Dubious.



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: #StandWithSpencer – John Hawkins Attacks Robert Spencer
Jihad Watch: UN Reports That Hamas, Not Israelis, Killed BBC Reporter’s Baby In Gaza
The Truth About Guns: More Guns, Fewer People?
Weasel Zippers: Maryland GOP State Senator Files Bill To Prevent School Suspensions Over Inane Gun Comparisons
PJ Tatler: Yep, Ashley Judd 2014 Is Official
Jazz Shaw: Karzai Now Accusing U.S. Of Collusion With Taliban
Lonely Conservative: SNL’s Goodbye To Hugo Chavez
Protein Wisdom: Outdoor Channel Poised To Leave Colorado

Rule 5 Sunday: This Time It’s For Real

Posted on | March 10, 2013 | 15 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


For the benefit of those reading Rule 5 compilations for the first time, or who have forgotten since last time: some of the links below are most definitely Not Safe For Work and could contribute to the pollution of your precious bodily fluids – or worse.


Laughing Conservative leads off this week with Adriana Karembu, followed by Conservative Counterpoint with hot babes packing heat.* Animal Magnetism has Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon, Fishersville Mike has the Big Bang before hoops, and Randy’s Roundtable comes off the road trip with Kara Wester. Reaganite Republican returns with Miss Kosovo 2012, while Sahib and the Crew debut with a feature on the SHEALS (no typo). Eye of Polyphemus offers Scarlett Johansson, First Street Journal has basic rifle marksmanship with the Delta Dragons, and Ninety Miles From Tyranny pulls a threefer with Late Night Ladies, more Late Night Ladies, and a Hot Pick of the Evening.


EBL starts with Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke, and continues with Ashley Judd, Nigella Lawson, and Lisa Dutton.


From his secret lair at Site Y, Soylent Green submits Curse of the Code Monkeys, Four Years Later Motivationer, Tuesday Titillation Erin, BTW You Guys Are Awesome, I’m Thinker Than I Dumb I Am, Humpday Hawt GULAG Edition, Fursday From The GULAG Lexi, and a re-run of a link previously featured at Live at Five: Best AGW Hoax Promotion EVAH. Over at his new digs, it’s Let’s Try This Again Shall We? Corsetus Interruptus, and Now That’s A Wakeup Call!


A View From The Beach offers Candice Swanepoel, Oh No Silvio!, Women And Chimps Act Alike, You Can Take The Woman Out Of The Cave…,Cave Girls Have Stronger Jaws, Recording Fail, and Goats (With Girls).


Proof Positive has Monica Bellucci, Sex In Advertising, and vintage babe Celeste Holm; Dustbury checks in with Becky?# and Little Peggy March; and at the Camp of the Saints, it’s Lisa Dergan and the Rule 5 News.


The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week included Sayaka Ando, Zulay Henao, Suelynn Madeiros, Nicole Alexander, Norika Kamamura, Jewel Santini, Annabella Botalli, Rachelle Leah, Romina Aranzola, Norelys Rodriguez, and Laura Bell Bundy.


Thanks to everyone for their links! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox is Saturday, March 16.

No School Like the Old School

Posted on | March 10, 2013 | 6 Comments

Ed Driscoll has memory. Intelligence is, in fact, mostly about memory. So the more you remember, the smarter you are. This is why old people are smart and young people are stupid.

So I was reading Ed’s account of “The State of Journalism in 2013,” and I was stunned when Ed reminded readers — I knew, but had forgotten — that Mark Steyn used to write for The Atlantic.

Alexis C. Madrigal, Harvard ’04

Posted on | March 10, 2013 | 42 Comments

“I remember walking down Barlett Street in the Mission and saying to myself, out loud, ‘I’m a writer. I’m a writer! I’M A WRITER!’ It was all I’d wanted to be since I was 16 years old. And I was making it.”
Alexis C. Madrigal, “A Day in the Life of a Digital Editor, 2013,” The Atlantic

You need to descrease your Red Bull intake, kid. And your dream? Too small, really. Certainly too small to pile up student debt for the tuition at Harvard ($54,496 a year). There’s a book about that.

An Ivy League education is not a prerequisite to being a writer, yet I have long noticed that The Atlantic has a fetish for Harvardians, so there is this sense of clubby cliqueishness about it. This is not mere elitism and it’s not “meritocracy.” It’s credentialism, is what it is.

And it is impossible to imagine that any Harvard alumnus ever would have walked into the offices of the (now defunct) Cobb News-Chronicle on Love Street in Austell, Georgia, on a spring day in 1986 and walked out with an assignment to cover the City Council meeting that night.

While I don’t recall saying out loud, “I’m a writer,” I was happy to have a job, and the pay was $4.50 an hour.

This was less than I’d been paid to drive a forklift in a warehouse on Fulton Industrial Boulevard for the past year and a half, but I didn’t have to wear a hard hat, there was no heavy lifting involved, and this entry-level gig offered hope that one day at the Jax State reunion, I’d have a respectable answer to the question, “What are you doing these days?”

Being a reporter — or, subsequently, a sports editor, etc. — was at least the kind of coat-and-tie job a college graduate was supposed to have. Whether journalism is an altogether respectable profession is a subject of much debate lately. Apparently, everybody in this racket is now either (a) plagiarizing, (b) working for shady foreign dictators, or (c) hustling for peanuts while competing for page-views with LOLCats.

Would it be wrong to blame this on Alexis C. Madrigal, Harvard ’04? Yes.

But we need someone to blame, kid, and you’ll do for now. So . . .

This self-indulgent and arguably self-aggrandizing rant of yours about what it’s like to work as Web editor for The Atlantic? I’m not saying that there is anything factually inaccurate about it, but the general tone of the thing is insufferably smug, Harvard Boy.

Like you invented the fucking Internet or something. We took a vote, Alexis, and it was unanimous: We all want to stab your eyes out.

How dare you — who have never been down range, as it were — presume any standing to lecture Nate Thayer as having done something “nasty,” about which you have any right to be “incensed”?

Whatever stuff you were flinging over the digital transom circa 2004 that made you say, “I’m a writer,” I’m reasonably certain it wasn’t the kind of work Nate Thayer does, which involves traveling places where news is happening, seeing it with your own eyes, and taking notes.

As I say, I’m reasonably certain you never did that kind of work, Alexis, because if you had paid those kind of dues, you certainly would have shared the universal umbrage at the disrespectful way your “global editor” Olga treated Nate Thayer.

Your pious sermonette about how hard it is to do your job, and why Olga couldn’t have at least offered Nate $50 for the 1,200-word article she solicited from him, would never have come to my attention, Alexis, if I hadn’t been monitoring my Site Meter and noticed incoming traffic from liberal economist Brad DeLong’s blog.

“Oh, shit,” I thought. “What have I done this time?”

Generally speaking, liberal blogs never link me except in scornful outrage, but this time — “Noted for March 10, 2013” — I found a link down at the end for my take on the Juan Williams scandal. Thanks, Professor DeLong, and thank you also for linking Alexis C. Madrigal, Harvard ’04, because my blood pressure probably wasn’t high enough already, and there’s nothing like aerobic cursing to get that cardiovascular thing going.

DIE, YOU FUCKING HARVARD PUNK!

And I say that not merely on my own behalf, but on behalf of every other doomed soul hustling for nickels and dimes without benefit of a Harvard diploma or a staff gig or an academic/think-tank sinecure. Because here’s the thing, Alexis: It ain’t like you didn’t have a choice.

“I asked myself whether I should have stayed at the hedge fund job that I took right out of college and hated so much I quit before the summer ended.”

Show of hands?

Yeah, it’s unanimous again, Alexis. We all wish you had stayed with that hedge fund job you took right out of college, because none of us ever got that kind of offer. We didn’t go to Harvard.

You quit a job that none of us ever got offered, Alexis, and now you’re over here telling Nate Thayer how to do his job — and do it for free?

What part of “fuck you” is so hard to understand?

Anyway, I don’t have time today to thoroughly fisk your article, so I’ll have to crowd-source it to what some guy called the Army of Davids. And like I said, it’s not that you got anything factually wrong.

It’s your punk attitude — your lack of respect — that is the problem.

Did you know Bill Quick at Daily Pundit named the blogosphere? Because I’m thinking he might have a thing or two to say about this.

Journalism is not rocket science. You didn’t invent the Internet, Alexis. And if Ace of Spades decides to rip you apart, hey, stuff happens.

 

Adam Carolla’s Righteous Indignation

Posted on | March 10, 2013 | 18 Comments

He rips up the liberal media the way you wish you could rip up the media. Never have you heard f-bombs stacked up with such raging fury. Ed Driscoll says, “You’ll like him when he’s angry. A lot.”

 

FMJRA 2.0: Venus, The Bringer Of Peace

Posted on | March 9, 2013 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Report: Team Kimberlin Harassment Now Targeting ‘Blog Bash’ Event at CPAC

Malaysians, and Other Foreigners I Might Be Able to Give a Damn About, If You Could Pay Me $389,724.70 to Care

Brett Kimberlin Calls Blog Bash Venue, Vows to ‘Put You Guys Out of Business’

American Guts: #StandWithRand

‘MalaysiaGate’ Day Four: Conspicuous Silence and Convenient Memory Lapses

Hugo Chavez, Looter

Shorter Juan Williams: I’m Sorry My Underpaid Assistant Plagiarized That Column With My Byline I Didn’t Write

CPAC 2014 Idea

How Much Cash Did Jerome Armstrong Collect in the ‘MalaysiaGate’ Operation?

FMJRA 2.0: Shout

‘MalaysiaGate’ Update: Still More Questions Than Answers (So Far)

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.04.13

Is It Time For The Two Scandinavian Ladies To Sing On Defunding ObamaCare?

  • Daily Pundit

@Rare-in To Go

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.05.13

The Rev. @ThorHalvorssen’s Universal Holiness Temple Choir of ‘Human Rights’

Atlantic Editor to Freelancer: ‘We Unfortunately Can’t Pay You for It …’

Also Sprach Daniel Hannan

Go, Kira Davis!

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.06.13

Thoughts on Teamwork

Rule 5 Wednesday: Snowed Out At The Tax Mines

Lying by Euphemism: ‘New Revenues’

World’s Youngest Blogger Simulates Reaction To Incoming Drone Strike

Tell The GOP We Want Reform

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.08.13

Just in Case New York Times Readers Don’t Feel Enough White Guilt Yet …

So, These Two Republican Senators Walk Into An Elevator. . . #StandWithRand

Top linkers this week:

  1. Rick’s Rants (17 the hard way)
  2. The Camp of the Saints (6)
  3. (tied) Da Tech Guy, Lonely Conservative, Hogewash and Daily Pundit (5)

Thanks to everyone for the linkagery! Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA is Friday, March 15.

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