New Yorker. The Margins of Error. Holder Explains Threat That Would Call for Killing Without Trial. WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible. “Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr.
Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.” While Mr. “Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Mr. Mr. Although widely reported, American drone operations over Yemen are considered to be covert by the administration.
A Refined Formula to Predict Doom in Celebrity Marriages. Drawing on Garth’s statistical expertise and my extensive survey of the literature in supermarket checkout lines, we published an equation in The New York Times predicting the probability that a celebrity marriage would endure. The equation’s variables included the relative fame of the husband and wife, their ages, the length of their courtship, their marital history, and the sex-symbol factor (determined by looking at the woman’s first five Google hits and counting how many show her in skimpy attire, or no attire). Now, with more five years of follow-up data, we can report firm empirical support for the Sundem/Tierney Unified Celebrity Theory.
The 2006 equation correctly predicted doom for and ; Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock; and Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. It also forecast that Will Smith and Jada Pinkett would probably not make it to their 15th anniversary, in December 2012; so far, they’re still married, but gossip columns are rife with reports of a pending split. David M. “Mad Men’s” long-standing 9/11 connection. Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard in Retirement Love thy Leader | George Megalogenis. A curious feature of our political debate is the way it compels former prime ministers to lose their dignity in the endless feedback loop of the legacy war. The Americans, despite their more openly hostile political culture, treat their ex-leaders with sufficient deference to absolve them of the need for after-the-fact combat.
When a memoir is written by a Bush, a Clinton or a Carter, no other former president feels the need to gatecrash the book tour. Australian prime ministers – even those who head minority governments – have more legislative power than American presidents. Remember, Barack Obama’s Democrats had control of both houses of congress for just over a year, yet they forced him to water down his mandate for health care reform. But in retirement our leaders suddenly become non-persons.
They would be the last to admit it, but Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard are bound by the great Australian insecurity that we are too small to matter. How Biased Is Your Media?: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast. Glenn BECK : Glenn Beck. I’m an entrepreneur. I am a reluctant, believe it or not, commentator. And dad. Stephen DUBNER : All right, now to the theme of our conversation today -- when I say media bias, you say what?
BECK : Yes. ANNOUNCER : From WNYC and APM, American Public Media: This is FREAKONOMICS RADIO. DUBNER: Let’s say that Glenn Beck is right. Andrew ROSENTHAL : I don’t know where to [1] begin in describing how completely ridiculous I think that is. DUBNER : Pick a spot and begin. [2] ROSENTHAL : Well. DUBNER: That’s Andrew Rosenthal. ROSENTHAL : I’m the editorial page editor of The New York Times. DUBNER: We’ll hear more from Rosenthal later. Steve [3] LEVITT : So measuring media bias is a really difficult endeavor because unlike what economists usually study, which are numbers and quantities, media bias is all expressed in words. GROSECLOSE : So, there are twenty media outlets that I examined. DUBNER: That’s Tim Groseclose. DUBNER: Yeah, Levitt put himself at about a forty-five.
The Game of Politics Amateur League | Mungo MacCallum. In nineteenth-century Britain, politics was seen as a bit of a diversion from the real business of life: a sort of gap year (or years) taken by those who felt it was their duty to serve the public or at least give the public the benefit of their superior wisdom. There were, of course, the others: the time servers, the party hacks, the go-getters and the grafters, who, it was widely believed, made up the bulk of those with their snouts in the parliamentary trough. But these were not the real politicians – the men (women did not even have the vote) who ran the country, albeit often on a part-time basis. They would never have referred to politics as a profession; it was The Great Game, in which they were the gentlemen, not the players. With the granting of universal male franchise and the rise of the labour movement this changed to some extent, but even for those on the Left, formal politics remained a secondary consideration; the union movement was the true representative of the workers.
The NS Profile: François Hollande. Three decades ago, a French politician flew to Washington to take part in a left-wing conference. The editor of the New York Times turned down the suggestion that an interview or news report on the visit was worth the space. Five months later François Mitterrand was president of the fourth-biggest economy and third-largest nuclear power in the world. The provincial capriciousness of the Anglo-American media in ignoring cross-Channel politics hasn't changed. Today runs a story on the most minute aspects of the Republican primaries almost every morning, yet the presidency of France matters more to us.
If all the opinion polls are to be believed, by May France will have a new president. So, it may be time for some understanding of who Hollande is. Second, Voltaire might have been thinking of Sarkozy when he wrote, "Cet animal est très méchant:/Quand on l'attaque il se défend" – which was translated by Nabokov as "This beast is very mean: in fact/It will fight back, when it's attacked. "