Something missing? On Wednesday, an off-duty K9 deputy sheriff was enjoying lunch with his wife at a quiet restaurant in a shopping mall in MA. Without warning, a man crashed his car into the mall entrance, then entered the restaurant and began stabbing people. Read the News story HERE The heroic deputy confronted the suspect…
Today in History: “Top Gun” The Movie Turns 30 Years Old Today!
OMG, I am feeling old…I remember going to see this like 3 times at the theaters when it first came out (you know you are getting old when you preface a lot of your sentences with “I Remember!”) I have to admit, now when I watch this movie, I find it all a bit corny…
Crusader Corner: Al Qaeda Threatens Americans With Attacks
Beware! Buried in today’s news is the story that Al Qaeda’s “Inspire” online magazine is ordering jihadis already within CONUS to go to the homes of business leaders and murder them, beginning with Bill Gates. Inspire also encourages random knife attacks of Americans, the same kind that are a daily occurrence in Israel. We’ve already…
Cartel Corner #80: Infiltrating the Dope Game
Anti-drug agents are usually extremely cautious about spilling the beans on their secret world, which lies somewhere between espionage, police work and battlefield. But here’s a rare inside look, offered by a veteran of the drug war. Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations, served more than three decades in the agency,…
Cold War Files: When the Air Force Dropped a Nuclear Bomb on South Carolina
A version of this story originally appeared on Muckrock.com. If you ever find yourself traveling on Crater Road in Mars Bluff, South Carolina, be sure and carve out a few moments for a marker commemorating this whimsical footnote in Cold War history – that time the US nearly nuked itself. Although the event was written about extensively at the…
Surveillance State: The Missing Piece of Obama’s Terrorist “Kill Memo” Still Haunts America
The lack of adversarial opinion for a 2011 drone strike on Anwar Al Awlaki could presage the killing of U.S. citizens in America When U.S. Pres. Barack Obama considered the unprecedented step of intentionally killing an American citizen without judicial process, he asked for a legal opinion that would provide legal cover in case he…
Book Review: Playing to the Edge, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
by Michael V. Hayden Penguin, 448 pp When Michael Hayden was a young air force officer in the 1980s, the military stationed him as an intelligence attaché in Bulgaria. There, the man who would rise to the top of the American intelligence community in the post–September 11 era lived under constant surveillance: he and his…
World War II History: Los Angeles Examiner Publishes a Map in 1937 Predicting How Japan Could Attack America
On November 7, 1937, the Los Angeles Examiner published a prescient map predicting how Imperial Japan could attack the US during World War II. Created by Howard A. Burke, the map imagined a Japanese attack on the US that closely predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor four years later on December 7, 1941. Burke…
Socialism Sucks: The Political Rehabilitation of Che’ Guevera
It might surprise some of you to hear that I can be completely unreasonable and even aggressive about certain issues; the rest of you already know me well enough to expect it. I left all my social skills someplace in Eastern Europe. I’ve even been known to make an ass out of myself in public…
Obscure Weapons: The Standschultze-Hellreigel Submachine Gun
The Austro-Hungarian Standschutze Hellriegel debuted in 1915. Today the automatic, light firearm is something of a mystery. The prototype blended pistol-caliber ammunition with the firepower of a machine gun, making it one of the first weapons which could be considered a “submachine gun.” That much, we know. The rest is … conjecture. The images in this…