"The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

About Duke Elington

Georgia outlaws involuntary implantation of microchips in people. Seriously.

There has been more arrests of Air Marshals since the program has started than arrests they have made.

Rage on the Right. The Year in Hate and Extremism. Hate groups are growing. Protecting the US president has presented the secret service with the greatest challenge in its history.

A photography essay.

In Afghanistan, hundreds have taken to the streets of Kabul and elsewhere to protest the US killing of civilians. The incident that has sparked the most outrage took place in eastern Kunar on December 27th, when ten Afghans, eight of them schoolchildren, were killed. According to the Times of London, US-led troops dragged innocent children from their beds and shot them during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from eleven to seventeen, all but one of them from the same family.

Could American's be any dumber when it comes to health care?

"The feud between renegade Sheriff Joe Arpaio and local officals is exploding. He has now indicted one judge who ruled against him (for obstruction of justice), and got a warrant to search the office and home of another."

WTF Obama?

LBJ, Vietnam, Afghanistan.

"In September 2008, while visiting relatives in Branson, Missouri Keil was arrested for being an illegal alien in what appeared to be a fairly well planned operation. He was charged with falsely representing himself to be a US citizen, and falsely using a US passport. Keil, a US Air Force veteran, has held a US Passport since 1967, which had been renewed seven time."

From basic training to Iraq to back home.

This thread is full of WTF.

In the forty-one drone strikes by America in Pakistan 98 percent of those killed were civilians.

"The woman at my polling place asked me, do I believe in equality for gay and lesbian people? I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, "What do you think I fought for on Omaha Beach?"

They released their code, by accident, and it looks kind of sketchy.

It will make you angry.

“We’re in a place we haven’t been since the Depression: Our economy is so completely fucked, the rich are running out of things to steal.”

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way."

"The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you hear among Republicans is 68 percent envy and 32 percent sour grapes. Here is an idealistic, articulate young president who is enormously popular everywhere in the world except in the states of the Confederacy, and here sit the 28 percent of the American people who still thought Mr. Bush was doing a heckuva job at the end, gnashing their teeth, hoping and praying for something horrible to happen such as an infestation of locusts or the disappearance of the sun, something to make the president look bad, which is not a good place for a political party to be, hoping for the country to slide into chaos. When you bet against America, you are choosing long odds."

I haven't traveled TO the states since I was 18. I have traveled THROUGH the states, in transit to other parts of the world, and even that is a big pile of suck.

A shit load of stuff, apparently.

I'm going to go with, "yes."

"Charles Hood, sentenced to death for a double murder committed in 1989, is currently fighting for his conviction to be overturned and subsequent death sentenced to be stayed. Why? Because the lead prosecutor and judge were having an alleged affair at the time of the trial." What the fuck, Texas?

Bizarre.

"How Wal-Mart's values are shaping America's economy -- and why this is a very bad thing."

"What do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president? A surge of white racial resentment, loosely disguised as a populist revolt."

Smart.

That's pretty freaking good.

This blog is great.

Cringly on IBM, American Health Care, off-shoring, and a host of other issues.

American "health care" is exceptionally bad. I guess that's what you call American Exceptionalism.

On the straight up lying taking place in the US about Health Care reform.

This quote is golden: "I'll say this for George Bush: you'd never have caught him frantically negotiating against himself to take the meat out of a signature legislative initiative just because his approval ratings had a bad summer."

Apparently Americans are, more or less, morons.

As one would imagine, the students at Berkeley are less than impressed.

The US Government!

Holy shit: "Much of the $7.9 billion in development aid allocated to Afghanistan in the past seven years never made it there because about half of that money ends up being spent on American companies."

"Scott Horton discusses the latest reports about the pending appointment of a torture special prosecutor with Keith Olbermann."

Benjamin Franklin apparently knew how to live the good life.

America needs more Scott Hortons.

"Goldman’s profit announcement is a giant 'fuck you' to the rest of the country."

This stuff makes my head explode. I can't believe I'm going to be flying through LAX. It hurts me so.

This MetaFilter post is longer than most AP articles. I think going through all the links will take ages.

\"Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser El

\"The ironic legacy of the war to end all proliferation will be more proliferation.\"

I get asked to visit people in the US fairly often. I\'ve been saying, \"No, I can\'t go,\" for a good while now.

To ACLU lawyers have written a pretty detailed account of what the US is doing to prisoners overseas.