@conhans
Georgetown SSP, 2024. Security Studies, Counter-Terrorism, Middle East Studies, Military History. Arabic & Latin. Simulations, Board Games, and Miniature Wargaming. BA History BSC, '20. MLitt (Distinction) CSTPV '21-22.
Having the energy to attack Iran because "it's dangerous and totalitarian" but not keeping that energy to attack Russia, which is dangerous at a global scale, totalitarian, planning to invade Europe, and threatening to launch nuclear weapons every two weeks, doesn't really seem coherent.
Trump acknowledges he has launched a war.
This shreds our Constitution, which assigns decisions of war to Congress.
Congress must vote on a War Powers Resolution immediately. No war with Iran!
The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!
This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...
Whenever you see a story about how liberals aren't making their conservative peers feel welcome enough, this is who they're talking about.
In the 1960’s, racist government officials called civil rights protesters ‘outside agitators’ & ‘professionals’ because they couldn’t accept that their neighbors & many others acted morally to right the wrongs. They couldn’t accept it.
Today our government is doing the same crap
1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, "Ohio."
2026, Bruce Springsteen, "Streets of Minneapolis."
This is true patriotism.
Death toll in Afghanistan when NATO answered the US’s call:
- 453 Britons
- 158 Canadians
- 89 French
- 59 Germans
- 53 Italians
- 44 Danes
- 17 Spaniards
“Stayed a little back, off the front lines “!
No one in the media will call him out over this lie or any of the others he spouts.
I cannot tell you how absolutely infuriatingly this stuff comes across to Europeans.
When we say America is no longer a reliable ally, it goes considerably deeper than Donald Trump himself. This kind of complacent, condescending shit is a *huge* part of it.
This is pure, unabashed bigotry.
If a politician said this about any other faith, they would rightfully be run out of their party.
But this kind of despicable anti-Muslim rhetoric is so normalized that a sitting Senator uses it without consequence.
A stain on our Congress.
"An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.” Letter from the Birmingham Jail
I will admit the high price of groceries is really hitting me right now because I’M BUYING GROCERIES TO DELIVER TO MY NEIGHBORS WHO CAN’T LEAVE THE HOUSE BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT HAS SENT AN OCCUPYING FORCE OF FUCKSTICKS TO MY CITY.
So to be clear we have actually reached the point where NATO states are deploying tripwire forces to deter *another NATO state* from invading *another NATO state.*
I struggle to communicate the strategic and just regular insanity of this moment.
That testimony also revealed that alongside klan activity, ex-confederate units had reorganized, armed, and marched to polling places and political rallies to intimidate Black and White Republicans and moderates.
The boy holding a bag of haribo confectionary is questioned by a masked IcE agent while three others with weapons stand by
The boy has head bowed, holding his confectionary, as he is taken away.
A teenage boy was walking home in Minneapolis yesterday when four masked men jumped out of a van & questioned him - with no parent or guardian present.
He was bundled into the van & taken away.
Bystanders heard the boy say: “Can I just go home?”
I don’t know how America comes back from all this.
that’s how you thread the affordability + ICE needle
I still can’t get over the logic of “we don’t care what China and Russia do” paired with “we will invade Greenland and destroy NATO in order to stop China and Russia”
"Under the 'Compromise Scenario', Denmark would agree to give Trump full military access to Greenland and deny access to Russia and China."
This is the status quo. We've had it since before Trump was born. It's the most open-ended "put whatever you want here" deal we have for any foreign territory.
Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Common Sense, published 250 years ago today.
My pub sing group had an emergency singalong tonight and, I’m telling you, you need to sit in a room with other people and yell the angry verses of Woody Guthrie songs. You may not realize it. But that’s what you need. That’ll fix it.
"We had whistles. They had guns."
But whistles can be more powerful than guns. And the people who go out to meet those violent goons the regime is sending to terrorize their neighbors are proving it. They know they are putting themselves in danger. And yet they bear witness and push back.
I am supposed to be a 'words' guy, yet I find that I lack the words to fully express the sense of rage and betrayal that I feel, having been raised to believe in the beauty of the United States as an - imperfect - pluralistic republic, to see these quislings try to turn it into a boring ethnostate.
A Christmas Eve poem for comic strip Calvin and Hobbes
“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.”
-Jacob Marley, A Christmas Carol
This is just straight-up a Rankin-Bass villain speech.
I am not sorry. This is simply true. Academics should be able to write fluently and express themselves clearly and academics should do their own work. It’s literally our job. It’s what we trained until 22nd grade to do. This is a simple observation that should require no explanation or defense.
I have planned & hosted these ceremonies at two different jobs, and I can 100% confirm that @kevinmkruse.bsky.social is 100% correct. And I would guess that probably 90% of people born in this country couldn’t pass the citizenship exam that new Americans have to pass to be naturalized.
It's the 160th anniversary of the United States' refounding, the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
The Church Committee Report book cover with a photo of Frank Church holding a CIA dark gone done in 1970s style orange. Edited and introduced by Matthew Guariglia and Brian Hochman with a foreward by Beverly Gage.
“It is clear that Congress must exert its will and devise procedures that will enable it to play its full constitutional role in making policy decisions concerning intelligence activities. Failure to do so would permit further erosion of constitutional government.”
That was written in 1975.
Happy Victory for US Arms and Down With Treasonous Slavers Day!
Reading this as a historian of a period when women regularly wrote farewell letters to their families before giving birth because they knew how dangerous it was, and knowing how grateful they would have been for reliable medical care and medicine, makes me want to scream in frustration