Juan Cole

Michele Bachmann is flailing around accusing all the US government officials of Muslim heritage of being connected to the Muslim Brotherhood (which in turn she misunderstands as a radical group). Not only did she attack the aide to Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, but when Rep. Keith Ellison complained about her McCarthyite campaign, she launched the […]

Some 300,000 violent crimes are committed each year in the US with the aid of a firearm.. One of the arguments for not banning the sale of military weapons to any old civilian (crazy ones included) in the US that one often hears from gun rights fundamentalists is that they need the guns to fight […]

Noam Chomsky writes at Tomdispatch.com (excerpt Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of Magna Carta, one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive.  Whether it will be celebrated, mourned, or ignored is not at all clear. That should be a matter of serious immediate concern.  […]

Police are concluding that the semi-automatic rifle with 100-round drum attached used by the Aurora shooter jammed. He was then forced to use his Glock pistol and shotgun (a lot of the 60-some people wounded in the theater were hit by shot from the shotgun). If this report is true, it seems sure that the […]

On Saturday and Sunday, the Free Syrian Army launched attacks on government facilities and personnel in Aleppo, with fighting raging in several districts of the country’s largest city. Fighting raged near a large government intelligence facility. If the rebels can take Aleppo, they would benefit from Turkish aid and trade, and could hope to build […]