There is no room in the Republican Party today for a noninterventionist conservative, at least in presidential politics. This flies in the face of many hopeful signals and predictions over the last year among conservative and libertarian writers — including some on...
City of the Living Dead
Anyone covering Capitol Hill knows that congressional hearings can be deadly — deadly boring and deadly predictable. But when a reported Iraq war veteran exploded into a House Armed Services Committee hearing this month as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was reading...
Winslow Wheeler Shrugs Off ‘Gadfly’ Epithet
This is the second profile in an occasional series about individuals taking on the Goliaths of war from inside the belly of the beast — Washington, D.C. Not many former staffers on Capitol Hill could say that they were fired for calling out that the emperor wears no...
The Boob Tube Does Surveillance Porn
Author Aldous Huxley once wrote, “Government-through-terror works, on the whole, less well than government through nonviolent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women, and children.” Writing this in 1958, Huxley hadn’t...
Who’s Afraid of Peter Van Buren’s Book?
Foreign Service officer Peter Van Buren had an interesting week. Aside from getting a book published, he became a news-cycle celebrity of sorts in Washington — not for his book, per se, but for the fact that he might get fired for it. Reporters and bloggers quickly...
Meet the Empire Watchdogs
This is the first profile in an occasional series about individuals taking on the Goliaths of war from inside the belly of the beast — Washington, D.C. In Washington, there are those who rattle the sabers, and then there are those who use them. The Project on...
Community Policing, Afghan-Style
Lal Mohammed says his 9-year-old son was stabbed and shot and left to die in a raid on his home. Another Afghan villager reported that a 17-year-old boy had been detained, beaten, and had nails driven into his feet. His injuries were so bad that his family packed up...
Surge Finally Getting a Second Look?
If he were to pat you on the back, you would list it on your resume. When in Rome, they do as he does. He is the life of parties he has never attended Sharks have a week dedicated to him. He is the most interesting man in the world. Just a few lines from the...
Post-9/11: All Eyes on You
In the latest installment of a year-long advertising campaign on the Washington metro, subway riders are treated to a series of smart, mod photographs of leather-clad VPPs (very pretty people) who we assume are spies, operatives, or fugitives á la Jason Bourne....
Who Says Obama’s Bad for Business?
President Obama’s critics like to say he’s anti-business, and that he doesn’t understand, nor even like, the military. He is a Democrat, after all, so how could he? Well, we can say that’s fundamentally not true with only two words: Blackwater Worldwide. If...


