Is a CIA Recruit Training Kit toy really necessary? Really? I was in a toy store picking up a few things for our son’s birthday tomorrow, and when I saw this, I just had to catch it on camera. Does anyone think that the CIA is all about playing infrared tag? This is what we’re telling our kids now? (shaking head)
This question and answer session with Valerie Plame at the Washington Post is really worth a read. Plame Wilson was online Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss her book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, which details her CIA training, covert status, experiences, responsibilities, the outing and her life now. Portions of “Fair Game” are blacked-out and indicate, say the publishers, places where the CIA has demanded redactions. The extensive…
The roundup of the news that catches my eye and matters to me is focused around a national theme, as it often is. We are too easily misled and kept in the dark. When we see a bit of light, it is too easy to cover our eyes. We have been progressively desensitized, but we’re not the first. I am beginning to have some hope again. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually…
I don’t always agree with Bill Clinton, but he sure cheered me up today. I was starting to think he’d completely lost his mind, hanging about with the Bushes. CLINTON: Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network. ABC just had a right- wing conservative run in their little “Pathway to 9/11,” falsely claiming it was based…
I’ve been waiting a bit to comment on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. There are a lot of opinions out there, and I’m happy most of all that people are talking and writing and thinking about issues, humor and satire vs. criticism and insult, comedy as news, the role of a court jester, and so on. Steve Bridges did a great imitation of Bush, and was obviously Bush’s own choice (for his own roast, he gets to choose?). I’ve heard…
Hayden’s involvement in the NSA domestic spying program does not recommend him. I find Hayden very personable, and he seems also to be a very capable man, but there are gaps in his statements – especially about the timeline of the spying program – that bother me. I am even more troubled by what he represents in the context of the continuing militarization of our government and the erosion of our system of checks and balances. It’s odd, but I…