SPECIAL OPS GONE WILD: A Tale Of Two Massacres

NEW YORK TIMES:  KABUL, Afghanistan — On Feb. 12 in a village near Gardez, in Paktia Province, Afghan police special forces paired with American Special Operations forces [NOT pictured, above]  raided a house late at night looking for two Taliban suspects, and instead killed a local police chief and a district prosecutor when they came out, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate. Three women who came to their aid, according to interviews with family members and friends, were also killed; one was a pregnant mother of 10, the other a pregnant mother of 6. A press release from the International […]

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COMCASTIC: 700 Level Swallowed By Evil Empire

INQUIRER: The Philly-centric sports blog The 700 Level and Comcast SportsNet and its CSNphilly.com are partners. As the blog announced this morning: The blog “will retain editorial independence, while tapping into the unique access, technology, and resources of Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia.” “Plus, we get to call Philly sports gurus like Jim Salisbury, Tim Panaccio, and Ray Didinger co-workers. Ray Diddy!” This will be a boon for Enrico Campitelli of Media, who finished his MBA from George Washington University recently and had been running the site from home. Campitelli will become a Comcast employee, and in addition to the salary and Xfinity […]

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EXPLAINER: The Idiot’s Guide To Obamacare

ASSOCIATED PRESS: It took lawmakers a year to shape President Barack Obama’s health care bill. If it finally passes Congress, it’ll take the better part of a decade to write the user manual for consumers and doctors, employers and insurance companies. Some health insurance consumer protections would go into place immediately, significant but limited in scope. The big expansion in coverage comes about four years from now, allowing more than 30 million people to sign up for insurance, with financial help from the government for most. Ripple effects continue well after Obama has to leave office in 2017, assuming he’s […]

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RIP: Actor Peter Graves Dead At 83

NEW YORK TIMES: Peter Graves, the cool spymaster of television’s “Mission: Impossible” and the dignified host of the “Biography” series, who successfully spoofed his own gravitas in the “Airplane!” movie farces, died on Sunday. He was 83. He died of a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., said Fred Barman, his business manager. It was a testament to Mr. Graves’s earnest, unhammy ability to make fun of himself that after decades of playing square he-men and straitlaced authority figures, he was perhaps best known to younger audiences for a deadpan line in “Airplane!” (“Joey, do you like […]

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Russian Prof Predicts End Of The U.S. By June

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations. Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian […]

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JIHAD JAMIE: Second Blonde Blue-Eyed American Woman Implicated In Cartoonist Murder Plot

DENVER POST: A Leadville woman is in custody in Ireland, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to kill a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of the Prophet Mohammed, according to her family and Leadville police. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, was arrested Tuesday in Waterford, Ireland, the second American woman to be grabbed in an apparent plot to kill the Swede, who incited the Muslim community with anger after his parody cartoons. Paulin-Ramirez was traveling with her son, Christian, 6, who has not been heard from since his mother’s arrest on Tuesday. Paulin-Ramirez’s mother, Christine Holcomb, said Friday night […]

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Police Officers Un-Fired For Televised Beatdown

INQUIRER: Eight Philadelphia police officers who were fired or disciplined in 2008 after a television news helicopter captured them beating three shooting suspects are getting their jobs back or having their punishments reduced, police announced yesterday. An arbitrator has ordered that the two officers who were terminated, Patrick Gallagher and Vincent Strain, be reinstated. Four other officers who were involved in the beating and later disciplined were punished too harshly, the arbitrator also found. Three of those officers were suspended, and Joseph Schiavone, a sergeant, was demoted. The arbitrator, from the American Arbitration Association, ruled that those suspended should receive […]

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CINEMA: Fulsome Prison Blues

A PROPHET (2009, directed by Jacques Audiard, 155 minutes, France) RED RIDING:1974 (2009, directed by Julian Jarrold, 102 minutes, U.K.) RED RIDING: 1980 (2009, directed by James Marsh, 93 minutes, U.K.) RED RIDING: 1983 (2009, directed by Anand Tucker, 100 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC When we first meet Malik, the lead character in Jacques Audiard riveting new crime drama A Prophet, it does not seem like he could possibly be the titular character. Questioned upon entering prison for assaulting a policemen, the 19- year-old Malik professes no religion. In fact he seems like a vulnerable blank slate; […]

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