White paper explains justification for killing US citizens

By Dan Brooks in terror 4 Comments
Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Al-Qaeda operative, was killed by a drone strike in 2011.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Al Qaeda operative, was killed by a drone strike in 2011.

Yesterday, NBC news released a white paper composed by White House lawyers explaining why it is okay to kill US citizens connected to Al Qaeda in foreign countries. You can read the full memo here, where you are at zero risk of forgetting who broke the story. According to the Times, this white paper describes another, more specific brief that I can only assume is even more tedious. The occasion for all this airtight legal reasoning rationalizing was the 2011 killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US citizen and general douchebag in Yemen, in a drone strike that also incinerated his 16 year-old son. Apparently they were guilty.

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written the following analysis of Girls

By Dan Brooks in oppositional culture 10 Comments

kareem

The single largest audience for HBO’s Girls is white men over 50. Fifty-six percent of the show’s audience is male. I got those fun facts from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s indictment of Girls in the Huffington Post, which he wrote because “win six NBA championships” was crossed off his to-do list. It is weird that Kareem composed a critical review of a TV show. What’s really weird, though, is that he makes a lot of very good points.

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14 year-old elects not to prove point by shooting everyone

By Dan Brooks in Gun control 1 Comment
Harrison High School—who wouldn't want to go there five days a week as required by law?

Harrison High School—who wouldn’t want to go there five days a week as required by law?

Last week, police arrested a 14 year-old student for bringing two handguns and 47 rounds of ammunition to Harrison High School in Montana. According to another student, the boy said he did so for political reasons; he wanted to prove that you didn’t need an assault rifle to shoot up a school. Later, in a detail that reminds you the person in question is 14 years old, prosecutors said that he decided to run away to the mountains and use the guns to hunt food. You actually do kind of need a rifle for that.

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Friday links! Common ideas edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
I'm not saying I'm a genius continental philosopher, but I also have a mustache.

I’m not saying I’m a genius continental philosopher, but I also have a mustache.

Nietzsche wrote that a great idea in the hands of common people will become itself common. I’m paraphrasing, here. Thanks to the internet, the common people have access to more great ideas than ever before, or perhaps the same number of great ideas plus several hundred million shitty ones. It’s hard to tell, in this brave new world, which is which. Once an idea like umadbro? is embraced as clever by hundreds of thousands, who’s to say that it isn’t great? Anyone of discernment or even interiority, that’s who. Today is Friday, and the common people are full of ideas. Won’t you smugly disdain them with me?

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Fox News runs saddest gotcha piece ever

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 5 Comments
Vincent Hancock defends his gold medal in skeet shooting at the 2012 Olympics.

Vincent Hancock defends his gold medal in skeet shooting at the 2012 Olympics.

For some reason—probably to convey that he, like all other Americans, just loves to fire a gun—Obama told the New Republic that “we go skeet shooting all the time” at Camp David. Exactly who “we” is remains unclear; he specifically exempted his daughters but said that guests use the range at the presidential retreat often. Presumably, “we” means that he goes, too, and obviously, the president is lying. The president hates guns, as anyone who hates the president will tell you. To support this story, Fox News has found an anonymous source who says he has been to Camp David a half dozen times, yet only knows of Obama shooting skeet twice. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link.

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