As you can see, they were interested in me but not scared.  I was more scared of them, for sure.

I’m sure there’s problems with this, I’m throwing it out there for my own edification.

And then the White House called their bluff, because why not? It isn’t like there was anything incriminating in the real emails. But in their zeal to expose an imaginary White House/State Department conspiracy to mislead the public, the Republicans made their own little conspiracy to mislead the public. Or maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy, but just one person. We don’t know yet, because Karl hasn’t said who his source is. That’s his call to make; I’d argue that while in ordinary circumstances, the confidential relationship between reporter and source is sacrosanct, the reporter has every right to expose the source if if the source lies to the reporter and makes him a party to a deception.

The GOP lied to the public in order to drum up opposition to the White House, and now they’ll just walk away from it unscathed because no one is going to hold them accountable.  The left is used to their lies and the right is indifferent to them.

Anastasia Adair, a 22-year-old Colorado woman, died after she was accidentally shot with an assault rifle she had recently purchased, TV station KMGH reported on Thursday.

Adair’s husband, Shane, and other witnesses told police she was drinking with friends in her garage Tuesday night and wanted to show off the weapon. It fired twice, hitting her once in the head as she brought it to the room and passed it to Shane.

Lt. Gary Toldness, of the Federal Heights, Colo., police department, told KMGH initial analysis appeared to be consistent with the reports of an accidental shooting, though the investigation was continuing. He also said Adair purchased the weapon at a gun show in March and described it as an AK-47-type rifle.

The NRA tells us that gun control doesn’t work because it only punishes the lawful and responsible gun owners, and then challenges gun control advocates to prove otherwise.  Show them a case like Adair, and they’ll just tell you that her actions demonstrate that she wasn’t a lawful and responsible gun owner.  And tomorrow there will be another story like Adair’s.  Another shooter/victim who was lawful and responsible until suddenly he/she wasn’t.  And we’re not allowed to draw any lessons from these deaths, ever, because the NRA’s test is one that can never be passed.  The term “Catch-22” gets misapplied all the time, but I think that in this instance we have an actual example of what Joseph Heller was getting at.

So the question is, when are we going to stop arguing on their skewed terms?

Miles and Jimi. Jimi and Miles. Fans of the late trumpet and guitar masters have long known that Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix had been making plans to record together in the year before Hendrix’s sudden death in 1970.

But less attention has been paid to the bass player they were trying to recruit: Paul McCartney, who was busy with another band at the time.

This tantalizing detail about the super group that never was – jazz standout Tony Williams would have been on drums – is contained in an oft-overlooked telegram that Hendrix sent to McCartney at TheBeatles‘ Apple Records in London on Oct. 21, 1969.

“We are recording and LP together this weekend in NewYork,” it says, complete with typographical errors. “How about coming in to play bass stop call Alvan Douglas 212-5812212. Peace Jimi Hendrix Miles Davis Tony Williams.”

The telegram has been part of the Hard Rock Cafe memorabilia collection since it was purchased at auction in 1995. Still it has only generated attention in recent months with the successful release of People, Hell & Angels, expected to be the last CD of Hendrix’s studio recordings.

“It’s not something you hear about a lot,” Hard Rock historian Jeff Nolan said of the telegram, now displayed at the restaurant in Prague. “Major Hendrix connoisseurs are aware of it. It would have been one of the most insane supergroups. These four cats certainly reinvented their instruments and the way they’re perceived.”

I’m a big fan of McCartney, but it’s hard to see what kind of contribution he’d have made to the band as a bassist.  Hendrix, Davis and Williams are each some of the best to ever play their respective instruments.  McCartney’s talent has always been his song-writing – he was nothing more than a competent bassist.

The health care law’s requirement that companies with at least 50 employees provide affordable health benefits is the chief reason most firms expect their spending on health insurance to rise in 2014, according to a poll conducted by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, an organization of human resources professionals. Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of companies definitely plan to offer health benefits to full-time workers, and just 0.5 percent said they definitely will discontinue coverage. More than 90 percent of companies surveyed currently offer health benefits to full-time workers.

Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. And we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often.

I’m not even going to bother trying to figure out how he got from Point A to Point B.

This is about what has to be one of the most inane disagreements in the history of American politics, the argument about whether Obama called the Benghazi attack an “act of terror” or a “terrorist attack.” Incredibly, people are still bickering over this. The other day Darrell Issa expressed his outrage that Obama had, in his diabolical attempt to cover up the incident, used the phrase “act of terror,” which, let’s be honest, is almost like saying, “Way to go, al Qaeda!”, instead of using the far, far, far more condemnatory phrase “terrorist attack.” It’s like the difference between saying “steaming pile of bullshit” when you ought to say “steaming bullshit pile”—anyone who can’t tell the difference between the two obviously can’t be trusted to run the country. Then the ordinarily reasonable Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post‘s fact-checker, sternly judged Obama to be guilty of a Four Pinnochio whopper, because at his last press conference he said, “The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism,” when in fact he didn’t say “act of terrorism but just “act of terror.” Facts? Checked.

But here’s what nobody seems to get: Benghazi was not a terrorist act. Or an act of terror. Or an act of terrorism. …

So why wasn’t Benghazi terrorism? Because the people targeted weren’t civilians. As The Wall Street Journal has reported, “The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation, according to officials briefed on the intelligence. Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.” CIA officials are not civilians. That doesn’t make their deaths any less tragic or painful for their families, but it’s the truth. Nor is a CIA outpost a civilian target. …

Waldman relies on the definition of terrorism in 22 USC § 2656f(d)(2):

the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents

Waldman is treating “noncombatant” as a synonym for “civilian”, or “nongovernment employee”. While Section 2656f doesn’t define “noncombatant”, I don’t think that is the case. An official at the State Department, or the IRS, isn’t a combatant. Ryan Crocker was an ambassador, not a soldier. It appears to me that the attack was terrorism.

It’s an entertaining column, but I think Waldman misses the mark.

Elvis Costello was quite right about “Imagine”: ”I think ‘Imagine’ is a dumb song. … His work was great, but that particular song I don’t think he thought it out.” That was a pretty gratifying quote to stumble across; it seemed like blasphemy to tell the obvious truth that that song is, in fact, dumb.

ADDED: Here is a Foo Fighters cover of “Band on the Run”:

Here is Ween covering it:

If Ween and the Foo Fighters have covered a song, it is a rock classic. FACT.