752 articles on Politics

  • 'We Don't Know Who The Good Guys' in Syria Are, But That Won't Stop CIA
    The Obama administration swears it's not arming the Syrian uprising. But the CIA reportedly is doing the next best thing: helping other nations figure out which rebel factions ought to get weapons shipments. And the revelation that the United States is involved more deeply in Syria than the Obama team has let on is starting to stir some misgivings amongst powerful legislators.
    06.21.12
  • House Defense Chief to Boehner, Pentagon: You Suck
    Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, absolutely hates cutting the defense budget -- especially when the Pentagon gets cut as part of a high-stakes deficit bill that he voted for. That summer 2011 bill was a mistake, the powerful congressman now says, one that he laid at the feat of the congressional leader of his own party. Not only that, but McKeon thinks the Pentagon is telling him a "fib" about how it'll absorb those huge, imminent budget cuts -- and the only option might be to kick the defense-budget can down the road.
    06.21.12
  • Comics as Literature, Part 5: Impolite Dinner Conversation
    As Linus van Pelt once put it, "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." Well, I probably won't devote an entire post to the Great Pumpkin, but there are plenty of comics out there that deal with the other two. And if Ghandi was right ¿ "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is" ¿ then the two are pretty intertwined. So, although these may not be the best topics for polite dinner conversation, they do make fertile ground for some really fantastic comics.
    06.21.12
  • 'Institutional Failures' Led Military to Teach War on Islam
    A class urging senior US military officers to wage "total war" on Islam wasn't just the work of one misguided teacher. According to an inquiry ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was the result of "institutional failures in oversight and judgment" at one of the military's top educational institutions.
    06.20.12
  • White House Sends 'Gun-Walking' Docs Down the Memory Hole (UPDATED)
    Thousands of documents sought by congressional investigators about a disastrous plan by federal agents to allow guns to "walk" into the hands of Mexico's drug cartels will now be out of reach. The Obama administration has asserted its executive privilege to withhold the documents -- just as lawmakers prepare to vote to hold the nation's top lawman in contempt on Congress.
    06.20.12
  • Top General Accused of Blocking Corruption Probe to Help Obama
    One of the US Army's rising stars stands accused of obstructing an inquiry into widespread corruption and mismanagement of the Afghan forces he mentored. And if the charges are accurate, they could end the career of one of the military's top officers.
    06.20.12
  • FireFly Controller Board Simplifies Rocket Science
    Recently, my friend Mike Doornbos from Evadot got together with the small-satellite crew down at the non-profit Kentucky Space to try to fix an annoying problem. They wanted a standard "mission command" board that could serve as the basis for the brains, power and voice for different space applications without having to make it from scratch every time. They liked their solution so much, they decided to share!
    06.20.12
  • Open Letter to Internet Companies: Tell Us How Much We Are Being Surveilled
    Google just unveiled numbers showing an alarming jump in the number of government demands for private user data. We took the technology giant to task for its report's shortcomings. But at least Google is moving toward transparency. Too many companies, like Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the carriers decline to divulge the number of times the government seeks private data on its users, and now is the time they do.
    06.19.12
  • Russian Ship, Loaded With Attack Helos, Turns Away From Syria
    A transport ship the U.S. believes is carrying attack helicopters to Syria is now heading back to Russia, ostensibly after its insurance was pulled. But the ship's return coincides with a meeting between Obama and Vladimir Putin -- a sign the two leaders may be starting to cooperate on what to do about Syria's deadly war.
    06.19.12
  • NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You
    The surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won't tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency as part of its sweeping new counterterrorism powers. The reason: it would violate your privacy to say so. That claim comes in a short letter sent Monday to civil libertarian Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, which Danger Room acquired.
    06.18.12
  • Iranian Missile Engineer Oversees Chavez's Drones
    One of the top supervisors over Venezuela's drone program is an engineer who helped build ballistic missiles for Iran. He's also part of a mystery involving drones shipped from Iran to Venezuela while hidden in secret cargo containing possibly more military hardware than just drones.
    06.18.12
  • White House, Citing Public's Right to Know, Stonewalls on Yemen War
    The center of the US drone war has shifted to Yemen, where 23 American strikes have killed as estimated 155 people so far this year. But you wouldn't know about it -- or about the cruise missile attacks, or about the US commando teams in Yemen -- by reading the report the White House sent to Congress about US military activities around the globe.
    06.18.12
  • War With Friends: Pentagon Eyes a Drone App Store
    The US military has dozens of different types of drones in its arsenal. Each one has its own unique controller. And each of those various controllers flies a single robot. There's no system that controls multiple drones at once. One Pentagon office thinks that's an archaic way of doing business. Inside the Pentagon's Acquisition, Technology and Logistics directorate, a team is working on ways to operate different types of drones with a single controller -- which it likens to an App Store.
    06.18.12
  • Video: Secret Space Plane Shatters Orbital Record as Chinese Rival Looms
    The second copy of the Air Force's X-37B robotic space plane landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early Saturday morning, ending a record-breaking 469-day orbital mission. It's an indisputable triumph for the U.S. military and space industry. Much less certain is the X-37's future. Budget cuts, labor woes and the looming specter of a Chinese rival could blunt the diminutive robo-shuttle's orbital edge.
    06.16.12
  • Mercury Space Observatory (1964)
    Piloted spacecraft differ from most other types of space vehicles in that they need to return precious cargo to Earth's surface. Beyond Apollo blogger David S. F. Portree describes how, a year after the last manned Mercury mission, a NASA engineer proposed that Mercury capsules be re-purposed to return a new precious cargo: photographic film containing high-resolution images of comets, stars, and galaxies.
    06.16.12
  • CIA Refuses to Confirm or Deny Drone Attacks Obama Brags About
    The Central Intelligence Agency continues to refuse to confirm or deny the covert military use of drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas, despite President Barack Obama and even a former CIA director¿s admission of the agency¿s targeted killing program. Despite numerous public comments on the CIA¿s drone attacks in far-flung locales such as Yemen from various ...
    06.15.12
  • CIA Refuses to Confirm or Deny Drone Attacks Obama Brags About
    The Central Intelligence Agency continues to refuse to confirm or deny the covert military use of drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas, despite President Barack Obama's and even a former CIA director's admission of the agency's targeted killing program.
    06.15.12
  • Navy May Need to Design Ships With Laser Guns in Mind
    After more than 20 years of research and development, the Navy's dreams of laser weapons are about to come true. But like the dog who chases the car and doesn't know what to do when he catches it, the Navy's thoroughly unprepared for its coming arsenal of focused-light weapons. A new congressional study warns that the Navy runs the risk of outfitting its surface ships with laser guns that their on-board power systems can't handle.
    06.15.12
  • US Outsources Its Africa Spying
    Africa is important enough to the United States to spy on. Just not with official U.S. military personnel. The military's Africa Command is outsourcing dramatic amounts of surveillance missions. And if something should go wrong, the contractors are on their own.
    06.15.12
  • US Needs Another 600 Humans to Fly Its Robot Planes
    The Pentagon doesn't have nearly enough people to operate its growing fleet of flying robots. Right now, the US Air Force is short nearly 600 drone pilots and sensor operators. And that's before the military carries out its plans to more than double its armada of remotely operated Reaper aircraft by 2015.
    06.14.12


 

 

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