Combat! blog’s flirtation with reportage continues, and I’m about to spend another day in court. Yesterday’s jury selection was a thrilling glimpse of what 12 of your peers might look like. Fun fact: of 28 prospective jurors, only one had read Krakauer’s Missoula: my landlady. All of them raised their hands when asked if they had an opinion about the book, though. Also, one prospect opined that a woman might not resist a rape attempt because “nowadays, people lack courage, purity, and innocence.” She went on to add that she did not have a television or read the newspaper. She knows what people lack nowadays from church.

Anywhom, it was exciting, and today will probably be more so. While I observe the wheels of justice, how about you read this sad story Mose sent me about the closing of Eagle Provisions? In 2001, we lived a block away from Eagle in the South Slope, which seemed way too nice after Bushwick. It was the first time I felt like I had moved up in New York. Now, of course, I realize that I was the beginning of a 15-year wave of gentrification that would destroy the neighborhood, and I feel bad. Just kidding—gentrification is anyone who moved to the neighborhood after you. But I’m sure the present-day residents of the South Slope will be happy to have those luxury apartments instead of Polish sausage.

There is very little Combat! blog today, because I have to go down to the courthouse and watch a trial. Besides making it clear that I’ll be watching somebody else’s trial and not my own, I want to direct you to this long, fascinating and questionable story by Seymour Hersh alleging that the United States killed Osama bin Laden while he was in the custody of Pakistani intelligence officials. Perhaps you heard about it. Since it came out, Hersh has been criticized for relying on anonymous sources to construct what amounts to a massive conspiracy narrative. But Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre, and he’s had a long and respectable career in journalism. Also, which seems more likely to you: bin Laden was living in a vacation town 40 miles outside Islamabad where he evaded numerous ISI officials, or bin Laden was living in a vacation town 40 miles outside Islamabad where he was supervised by ISI officials? Either a bunch of people lied to Hersh or the federal government lied to us. I suppose it could also be two things. Read it and decide for yourself.

 

Republicans in the Montana legislature proposed six bills related to school choice during the 2015 session, and five of them died in committee or were vetoed. The sixth, SB 410, became law by default ten days after it reached Governor Bullock’s desk, where it languished unsigned for the maximum period prescribed by the state constitution. And what did this bill, so radioactive that the governor could not acknowledge its existence, actually do? It provided an income tax credit of $150 for donations to private-school scholarship funds. That’s it. But it constituted school choice, and school choice is bad. In this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, we consider whether what such bills symbolize has become more important than what they do. If you still don’t have enough of my voice in your head after that, you can top it off with my review of a standout release from Missoula’s Howardian. And even after all that productivity, we’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links. Not bad for a middle-aged man with multiple undiagnosed illnesses, right?