Some interesting news: The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it sued the Houston-based military contractor KBR Inc (KBR.N) for alleged false claims act violations over improper costs for private security in Iraq. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleged that KBR knowingly included impermissible costs for private armed security in billings …
Foreign Affairs
An Update On History’s Greatest Monster
I wonder what the evil and vile Jimmy Carter is up to: A global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease is tantalizingly close to success. The parasitic infection, caused by a worm that can grow three feet long before it emerges from a patient’s body, now affects just a few thousand people per year. Almost …
Meanwhile, In Iraq
Might have to put John McCain in a flak vest and march him through a market with an armed guard again: At least four Sunni Muslim candidates who appear to have won parliamentary seats on the winning ticket of secular leader Ayad Allawi have become targets of investigation by security forces reporting to the narrowly …
Hold Tight, It’s Just Beginning
Beijing has a new solution to their huge, stinking garbage dumps: hosing them down with high-pressure deodorant spray guns. With millions more people now able to afford Starbucks, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and other elements of a western, throwaway lifestyle, the landfill sites and illegal tips that ring the capital are close to overflowing. We …
Petulant Children
Not like Generals have anything better to do: With a few simple words — “I would have to object” — Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina derailed a Senate Armed Services hearing today in which generals had traveled from Korea and Hawaii to testify about the Pentagon’s needs for the next year. Burr, …
Opposite Day
The “I’m rubber and you’re glue” strategy of Obama critique has Larison completely fed up. The latest example is Heritage Foundation nitpicking about Obama’s decision to cancel his trip to Indonesia and Australia so he could lobby for HCR: Apparently it isn’t enough that they have lost the largest policy fight of the last decade, …
Slow and Steady
More positive news: Defense secretary Robert Gates will offer “a way ahead” later this week regarding changes in the enforcement of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Gates, who testified in February before Congress alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen in support of a repeal of the 16-year-old …