Rumors flared into reports this morning that a cease-fire was brewing between Israel and Hamas, rulers of the Gaza Strip. It is not. Not yet, at least. Combat has resumed after both sides agreed to a five-hour "humanitarian pause" on behalf of the terrorized Palestinian civilians dying by the dozens under Israeli airstrikes.
Russia has denied reports from Kiev that a Russian jet shot down a Ukrainian jet that had been out fighting separatists. That super-strong accusation comes just as the US announces its most punishing sanctions yet against Russia, prompting Vladimir Putin to warn of a dead-end in relations between us and him.
And now there's news that a Malaysian passenger jet carrying close to 300 people was lost somewhere over Ukraine—just before crossing into Russia.
Americans are picking up guns and taking them outside so they can tell the feds just how little they want their towns, on the border or far from it, to play temporary host to the tens of thousands of Central American child migrants who've flooded over the border since the fall in hopes of fleeing drug violence.
Evidence of insanity:An Arizona congressional candidate rushed with supporters to the border yesterday, hollering at a bus full of kids all about "Lady Justice"—only to realize what he'd thought was a pack of immigrant kids was really just a bunch of Americans on a YMCA trip.
Edward Snowden, the fellow who helpfully leaked the National Security Agency's dirty business, still pines for America. Even if coming home means he ends up in chains at Guantánamo Bay, our Cuba-located concentration camp.
But America has other concentration camps! At a "secret" prison in Afghanistan where some detainees, mostly from Pakistan, have been held for 13 years, hunger strikes have been waged on and off over issues as awful as a lack of clean water.
After years of striving, Australia's right wing operatives have fulfilled something of a blood oath and killed off the country's longtime carbon tax.
Battleground races for Congress have been awash in campaign cash, predictably. But less predictably? The biggest money's been going to Democrats, who've been furiously courting the same outside groups they're hoping to crack down as part of campaign-finance reform.
A woman filmed while her face was viciously pummeled on the side of a road by a California HIghway Patrol officer has had her medical records seized by the very same CHP.
University of Oregon cops, according to a whistle-blower, kept a continually curated list of people and things they hated, people and things who they felt should "eat a bowl of dicks."
A divorce seems to be looming between the organization charged with implementing Oregon's health care reform law and the state's biggest source of clients, Multnomah County.
It's a pawn shop in Kansas City. It's also the place where broke and fallen athletes, desperate for a bit of cash and at the end of their ropes, hawk their most prized and personal sports artifacts and memorabilia.
LOTS OF THINGS IN LIFE TURN OUT DIFFERENT THAN WE EXPECTED. DOES THAT MAKE YOU SAD? OR DOES THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY? (HINT: I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. I'M AN AMERICAN.)
