Were you kind of bothered by this fact-set? Guy spontaneously confesses to a triple homicide and then attacks three armed persons (FBI agent and two Massachusetts State Troopers) with a knife and is then killed?

Well, none of the following will allay your suspicions.

So, maybe he didn't have a knife.

A local Orlando tv news operation reported:

FBI sources say Ibragim Todashev, a friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlen Tsarnaev, was unarmed when he was shot and killed by an FBI agent during questioning at an Orlando apartment last week," says an Orlando television station.

Officials said Todashev pushed a table and possibly threw a chair.

....

Sources said a sword was inside the apartment, but the weapon was moved to the corner of the room before questioning began. Law enforcement said when Todashev lunged, the FBI agent believed he could have possibly been going for his gun or the sword in the room, and that's when the agent opened fire.

The Washington Post then reported:

One law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Wednesday that Todashev lunged at the agent and overturned a table. But the official said Todashev did not have a gun or a knife. A second official also said Todashev was unarmed.

An official said that according to one account of the shooting, the other law enforcement officials had just stepped out of the room, leaving the FBI agent alone with Todashev, when the confrontation occurred.The shooting followed hours of questioning by the law enforcement officials that had begun the night before.

The most recent story, from the Orlando Sentinel, has the samurai sword back in the mix.

Though early accounts from unnamed federal law-enforcement sources claimed Todashev might have been armed with a knife, the latest version, released by a Fox affiliate in Boston, reported that Todashev lunged with a sword at the agent.

Shibly said there was a sword at the apartment, but it was mounted on the wall, ornamental and had a dull blade and a broken handle.

I have no explanations for this. I don't even have a read on it.

Except for this: While I previously gave certain parts of government more credit than others, I'm starting to believe it's just all corrupt.

And I don't even mean Scary Conspiracy Theory Corrupt. I mean corrupt as human beings are always corrupt: They screw up, then they lie about it, and then their initial lies spur follow-up lies, and then the whole department realizes that there's a problem with the initial employee who lied and now they all have to lie to "protect the integrity" of whatever.

I don't know if that happened here. The guy could have lunged for the sword, and the FBI agent could have just been a little too quick on the draw. (Or perhaps just in time on the draw. Who knows.)

But whereas before I'd provisionally assume the FBI was telling the truth, I gotta tell you: My working assumption is now that they are lying.

Because that's what they do.

And this is a pretty good reason to keep the government small and weak and then eyeball the hell of it anyway.

Incidentally, it sure would be nice to see photos of the wounds reportedly suffered by the FBI agent, even if the agent's identity continues to be obscured. Surely they can release photos of wounds to the body or arms.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (240)
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It's very simple: In his warrant application, Holder claimed to be interested in investigating James Rosen as a coconspirator in an espionage case. In addition, he claimed Rosen was a "flight risk," which would justify even closer monitoring (to make sure he wasn't buying plane tickets on Kayak, I suppose).

Now he says he never had any intention of prosecuting Rosen. In other words: He now says he lied when he told the judge these things, in order to secure his license to snoop on Rosen.

Well, which is it? If he never had any intention of prosecuting Rosen, the warrant application is a fraud on the court.

If he did have such an intention... that raises some additional questions.

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Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (294)
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Sorry, I forgot I was supposed to be a blogger and just commented for the last three hours.

Headline stolen from Allah. Says it all, really.

Here's a question: Many people have suggested that we just "let them fight each other until the maximum number of the jihadis (on either side) have killed each other."

Without endorsing that, and without questioning that: I'm wondering how the notion that Assad seems to now be winning this war, and, some thing, will win it within the next year or so, modifies the previous "do nothing" stance.

If we want them to keep fighting each other and Assad is slowly moving towards a win, does that mean we should step up support for the rebels in order to prolong the fighting?

I'm just asking. This is not a rhetorical question. It's a question-question.

It's one of those few times someone actually asks a straight question on the Internet.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (346)
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I'm skeptical myself, of this and the Lena Dunham outrage. And that's because I've seen this before, and I've seen this sort of ginned-up outrage directed at us, and it seems to me to be an unfair tactic.

Let's look at the left-wing version of faux outrage. The left is convinced that the right is racist. Every single person on the right is racist. They are convinced of this.

This is a conclusion which only needs to go looking for some evidence to support it. And it does go looking, and when evidence is constantly being sought, and the flimsiness of this evidence does not matter, it will be found.

So, for example -- but this could apply to any of ten thousand recent cases -- the left is convinced that Rick Perry is racist, because 1, he's from Texas, 2, he's white, and 3, he's Republican. The left knows he's racist. To make their belief a story, they need only strike upon some chintzy proof of it.

Lo and behold, they find that he once vacationed at a place which once, in its past (before Perry had vacationed there), had a rock on the property upon which was written a racial slur.

Now this becomes a Big Story. But note the actual story itself is ludicrous. The story itself is not a story. It's only pretended to be a story because the charge it supposedly proves-- Rick Perry is a kissing cousin of a Klansman -- would itself be a Big Story, were it proved.

I see the same thing going on with Adam Levine and Lena Dunham in their two recent gaffes. Levine said "I hate this country" after televoters watching his show voted against him; Lena Dunham tweeted some idiotic over-sharing posts about peeing in various Starbucks, and then added "Happy Memorial Day" to one.
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Posted by: Ace at 09:05 AM | Comments (774)
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So that's good.

Meanwhile, ABC, the Washington Post, and Politico will attend.

FoxNews just announced it too will boycott the Secret Spin Session.

I don't know how I feel about this last one. I want the secret spin session boycotted, but I also want someone in there who can report on any shenanigans that go on -- softball questions, reporters strategizing with Holder about how to win the media war on this, etc.

That is, I'm less interested in what Holder has to say than what the other reporters have to say.

But I suppose the Media-Government Complex has each others' contact information and can just call one another whenever they like.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 AM | Comments (230)
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Unpossible! If the government spends a tiny bit less we were told there'd be riots and DC/NoVa residents would have to resort to cannibalism. Apparently not.

In the months since the automatic federal spending cuts known as the sequester took effect, the Washington area has added 40,000 jobs. Income-tax receipts have surged in Virginia, beating expectations. Few government contractors have laid off workers.

...

“The surprise is that the economy is as good as it is,” said Stephen S. Fuller, the economist who directs the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. “We’ve done better than I expected.”

In January, Fuller predicted that the sequester, if enacted, would be an “end-of-the-world kind of hit” to the regional economy. He wrote an analysis of the cuts in March concluding they would kill more than 325,000 jobs in Virginia, the District and Maryland combined.

That estimate included both direct and indirect effects — that is, layoffs not just among federal workers and contractors, but also the workers, such as waiters or car salespeople, whose jobs depend on spending from federal paychecks.

So what's the lesson to be learned? Cut MOAR!

I can't say I'm surprised that the economic impact on the DC area hasn't been greater but I am disappointed. I think it's very unhealthy for the capital to be protected from the economic realities of the country as a whole.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:41 AM | Comments (66)
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In case you don't know, this is who James Goodale is.

... He is the former General Counsel and Vice Chairman of The New York Times and has represented the Times in all four of its cases that have reached the United States Supreme Court. He has also been called “the father of the reporters' privilege."

That said, on to the interview. The Russia Today lead in and the whole interview is interesting, go read it all, but here's a teaser:

RT: YouÂ’ve been called the father of reportersÂ’ privileges. What do you see as the current threats to press freedom in the United States?

JG: It, frankly, is President Obama and Rosengate because this is the first time the – I hate to use the term ‘Espionage Act,’ we’ll say national security act for your viewers – has been used to get reporters. I mean, that really is frightening because it’s usually used to get leakers. Rosen is a leakee, to use legal phraseology. If the Obama administration, or at least his Justice Department, thinks they can use criminal laws to get journalists because they’re co-conspirators, honestly that is one of the worst things I’ve come across in all the years I’ve been doing this.

If you're looking for an alternative to supplement US lamestream media, give Russia Today a look. They're covering a lot of stuff absent from US headlines -- such as this story about Gitmo prisoners getting being rehabilitated and reintegrated into society in a Yemeni facility. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:04 AM | Comments (106)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:17 AM | Comments (193)
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Happy Thursday.

NRO's indispensable Daniel Foster writes about Sen. McConnell's behind-the-scenes efforts to foil Obama's liberal plan.

Mayor Bloomberg -- and one of his gun-grabbing lobbyists -- got a ricin-tainted letter in the mail. Several police officers who intervened became ill.

The AP, in addition to the NYTimes, said "no fuckin' way" (paraphrase) to the AG's offer to give them an off-the-record chat about the DOJ's secret warrants targeting journalists.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:38 AM | Comments (297)
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60 Years Ago: Top of the World Baby!

Baby Name America

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:56 PM | Comments (919)
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