(NewYork City District Attorney Alvin Bragg makes a point about his Drag. Image AP) In all the other excitement, this important bit of the chaos was sidelined as the new week opened. It was not hard to peel the layers back in urgency, since it began with the threat of regional war in the Middle […]

(We are pretty sure the 87,000 new IRS employees will be concerned with the 1% on this Tax Day, right? Image Getty) There is some success to report this Tax Day. We submitted a hefty check to the people at the IRS a week or two ago, and we hope it flies. One thing we […]

This is new and interesting. The long flight time of the weapons over a significant distance makes information about them a component of the operation. A direct kinetic strike from a sovereign state is a different sort of beast than those that have roamed the neighborhood for decades. Just past dinner time here- in the […]

We were immersed in a last review of the new book yesterday. It drew us back to some old wanderings in some of the areas in conflict today. We smiled when we recalled that stroll across the Temple Mount and the scowls of armed young men around the Dome of the Rock. The hiss of […]

This Spring day dawned with a reminder of seasonal malice. The breeze is brisk out on The Patio, the skies close and gray, denying the welcome warmth that appeared- briefly- in a week filled with chaos, foreign and domestic. The picture above is from a pal in a square state as a reminder of past […]

That was a week, wasn’t it? We attempted to deal with some current affairs, ones that represent our chaotic present’s collision with the legacy of vivid recollections of our shared past. Just naming some of them swirled memory and emotion. Section 702 is an ongoing issue that combines the complexity of technical collection of information […]

There is more medical stuff on the horizon this morning, the two-week check from the vascular surgeon that has proved a distraction lately. Things appear to be going well and the staff is generally upbeat. The usual coverage of the remarkable events of this Spring continue to spew across the Big River here and make […]

(This image might be one observed in the heavens above San Francisco, California. It is what is called a “contrail,” or the vapor cloud produced by operating jet engines in the rarified atmosphere high above. It was news this exciting week! Image YouTube screen capture). Morning, Fellow Travelers! We appear to have survived another extraordinary […]

(Here’s the nitrogen cycle. Insert the EPA logo somewhere in the circle at random the way they do). Sorry to bother you on an already busy morning, but here is another way things work these days. It is something that would have come up as “news” back when our budget system worked. It might have […]

OK, we gotta start with it, right? It was pretty cool for those who were under the path of the total eclipse yesterday. It did not arrive at noon like the literary version. It got a little dim here around three pm here in the capital. The larger astronomic events served as a tipping point […]