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In days of yore, when The Bomb was new and the Commies were everywhere everyday, the halls of academe and government teemed with suits who made prosperous livings by theorizing about how Washington’s nukes and Moscow’s nukes matched up against each other. From the paskudnyak Herman Kahn’s homebuilt Hudson Institute to the endowed chairs of […] Bill Broad and David Sanger seem to have nothing else to do in the twilight of their New York Times careers than beat the North Korea anxiety drum. In the tradition of Drew Middleton, who never met a general whose bugle he wouldn’t blow on page one, they continue to pen the creative nonfiction prologue […] What better way to begin another embattled year for American journalism than reading James Risen’s Intercept account of how top editors at the New York Times dragged the polish off their shoes to delay publishing revelations about NSA domestic spying? It takes a long, long time to rise to that paper’s masthead–years of demonstrating what […] With the end of another year in sight, this is traditionally a time to take stock. Fitting, then, that two news stories of the past week were about matters that defy commentary not because they are complex, but because they are too stupid for words. One, about the Pentagon having spent $22 million on “Advanced […] The proliferation of commercial satellites that take photos-for-sale of the Earth’s surface long ago spawned a small industry of shops that will study these pictures and tell you what they think is going on down there. Applications for agriculture, city planning, et cetera are obvious, but there is a lucrative subset of the business that […] The New York Times treated Gil Rogin to a hometown boy’s obit today, evidence of how glorious it was to be born in Brooklyn before WWII and then climb the golden ladder in Manhattan. It was his good fortune to sell funny innocuous stories to The New Yorker when its readership was still comprised mostly […] Among the old Prussian Junkers, it was said that the human species began with the lieutenant. The status to appear at royal court functions, or Hoffahigkeit, began with that rank. Non-noble civil servants had to attain Class 4, equivalent to an assistant minister, to enjoy the same privilege. White House chief of staff John Kelly’s […] The most dangerous false sense of security is always the one embraced by the Commander-in-Chief. There is no engineering basis whatsoever for President Trump’s recent boast that American GMD (Ground-Based Midcourse Defense) interceptors have a 97% success rate. The Missile Defense Agency knows this–despite occasional chest-thumping before Congress. The Government Accountability Office knows this. And […] Vice President Mike Pence held a steak dinner for the meat industry yesterday. Actually, it was a meeting of an archaic government committee (yawn, already) called the National Space Council, which was created during the era of Dwight Eisenhower, who soon wished to disband it. It has had its ups and downs ever since, but […] The citizens of Maryland can feel warm all over today knowing that Northrop Grumman, which panhandled more than $50 million in free money (sweetheart loans, tax credits) from the state’s coffers last year, just found $7.8 billion in cash to buy Orbital ATK. Every penny helps. 9/21: When the governor of Delaware, haven for more […] |