It’s as though the San Bernardino shooting were a primer designed to demonstrate several of the possible ways to be a jihadi in the US. First, we have Syed Farook, a man whose parents were immigrants from a Muslim country … Continue reading →
Everybody’s analyzing the speech Obama gave last night. Its beauty or lack thereof was in the eye of the beholder, although even admirers of Obama weren’t what you’d call wildly enthusiastic. But I’m going to do something nobody else is … Continue reading →
[Scroll down for updates.] This is a breaking news situation with very few details known so far, but an active shooter and many possible deaths have been reported at a disability center in San Bernardino, California. At first I thought … Continue reading →
At first I read this article thinking that the escuses offered by Faklan Abdeslam—the mother of Paris suicide bomber Ibrahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up during the Paris attacks, injuring another man—were mordantly, bitterly, absurd. Faklan, by the way, is … Continue reading →
The circumstances are as follows, as far as we know up to now: The attacks, which happened minutes apart, began when a single shooter, identified as 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, drove a silver Ford Mustang convertible to a Lee Highway … Continue reading →
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dias Kadyrbayev were college pals and roommates. Both were originally from countries bordering the Caspian Sea—the former from Chechnya, the latter from Kazakhstan. And both are spending some time in prison: A college friend of Boston Marathon … Continue reading →
I found the following comment to my post on Tamerlane Tsarnaev and the BBC (cross-posted at Legal Insurrection) to be a good reminder of the difference between our own left/right divide vs. those of Europe: Some concepts don’t translate well … Continue reading →
I was surprised at the amount of misunderstanding that seems to have been sparked by my article yesterday speculating on the possibility that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a psychopath. I thought certain things about psychopathy were evident from the article, but … Continue reading →
…does not think Snowden’s any kind of hero, and believes the brouhaha over the NSA program is overblown. I don’t find his arguments all that compelling, although I’m not part of the unequivocal “Snowden’s a hero” bandwagon, either. I see … Continue reading →
Dzhohkar Tsarnaev didn’t just blow up hundreds of people in Boston. He also revived support for the death penalty (at least for himself), with 70% of Americans polling in favor of it in his particular case. Republicans are most in … Continue reading →
Ruslan Tsarni, the Tsarnaevs’ uncle, gives an interview: Unless the man is a consummate actor and dissembler, he seems to be just about the only member of the family who has some sort of conventional morality and sense of responsibility, … Continue reading →
Early reports that the Boston bombs were set off by cell phones turn out to have been mistaken, and they are now thought to have been triggered by “line of sight” controllers from remote control cars. Why might that be … Continue reading →