-
- Will Folks (NOT a terrorist)
-
- Khalid el-Bakraoui, alleged terrorist
To review the rules — this not being a Virtual Front Page, it is not intended as a complete summary of the most important news of the moment. It’s just stuff I think might be interesting to talk about — or that I think you might find interesting:
- The Outsize Role of Brothers in Terror Plots — The two dead Brussels bombers have been identified as brothers — one of whom, if you’ll allow me a wildly irrelevant digression, looked weirdly like Will Folks (see above) — and The New York Times examines this pattern of brothers doing such things.
- Obama rejects calls for change in strategy against Islamic State – At least on one level, I’m with POTUS on this. It’s ridiculous to say that because a terrorist attack occurs, an overall military strategy is a failure. It was grossly unfair several years back for Bud to keep claiming that the Surge didn’t work in Iraq because there were still terrorist attacks, and it’s unfair to say Brussels proves the Obama Doctrine isn’t working today. As long as there are people insane enough to blow themselves up to make a political point, it will still sometimes happen, even if your strategy is ideal. No, I’d go more by who is controlling what parts of Iraq and Syria to judge the efficacy of the president’s approach. But his position will become increasingly untenable if he keeps telling his staff about how many people fall in bathtubs in the U.S. And he needs to recognize that there is a lot of room for maneuver between his strategy and “carpet-bombing.”
- Richland Sheriff’s Department now has three mobile gizmos — They may not be as awesome as having a tank (technically, an armored personnel carrier), but they look like they might be a lot more useful in the everyday business of law enforcement.
- Religious groups take on government in supreme court battle over contraception — You know, whatever the ins and outs and legal fine points, you’re going to have a really uphill battle ever convincing me that the big ol’ government trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to do something that violates their consciences is a good thing. If nothing else, from a PR standpoint, it casts our system in a terrible light. It makes the federal government look like the kind of overbearing bully that my libertarian friends think it is. If only the order was named something else, like “Big, Mean Nuns Who Whack You on the Knuckles with a Ruler.”
