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?