The most fun you can have on the Internet starts here, with Spencer Ackerman’s strategic analysis of the Battle of Hoth, and continues here with the further analyses by military tacticians.
Ron Fournier rings the alarm bells about a third party emerging from public disquiet about the big two. We keep hearing about this, and it never ever happens, but you’ve got Rep. Reid Ribble (who represents Green Bay and its environs) sweating:
“Ross Perot was a goofy guy,” he said of the deficit hawk who mounted two independent presidential bids in the 1990s. “If he was packaged as a different guy and had the Internet, he would have emerged [as president]. The warning bell he was sounded then is getting louder today.”
This Dominican Today story wins the “headline not worth the click” prize. The hed: “Menendez scandal linked to Dominican Republic drug trafficking.” The accusation, by a friend of Menendez: “Cooperation between the FBI and DEA can clarify the sources and the motives behind the effort to tarnish the careers of Menendez; these are narco interest behind allegations.”
Thomas from Pink Martini sat next to Ted Nugent at the State of the Union.
We talked about hunting … in Texas (where he has lived for the past 10 years) and Michigan (where he grew up). Growing up he was inspired by Dick Dale … and later by the British Invasion bands of the mid-60s … The Yardbirds … The Rolling Stones. He only tours in the summer. I asked him if he did USO tours. He has … BUT is probably the only celebrity who carried his own machine gun. (Shockingly, I don’t have a machine gun of my own.) He thought this year’s Grammys were too “bubblegum” and childish. And, of all of his compositions, “Fred Bear” means the most to him … people ask for it at their funerals, their barmitzvahs, their graduations … “It doesn’t get more “wow” than that,” he said. At the end of the night, he shook my hand, and wished me luck. I thought he was a real gentleman.
Andrew Cohen has a must-read about the fate of the “torture memo” author. He’s a judge, of course.
And James Fallows “goes there” on Ted Cruz.
