Unfriendly Fire: Gays and National Security

I just came from my 15th reunion, and while I did not see the same sort of public commemoration that Josh talks about, it was very much a topic of conversation as ROTC had just returned to Columbia’s campus. Josh is right, this is no longer history, but our present. I knew more people who served in Gulf I, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less aware of the loss we suffer everyday. Memorial Day | Talking Points Memo. Though there are many customary ways to observe Memorial Day, I’ve often struggled to figure out a way to do justice…

Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison Breaks Down at Peter King Hearing — Daily Intel. it was near the end of his remarks, when Ellison told the story of Mohammad Salman Hamdani, a Pakistani-born American citizen who drove an ambulance part-time and worked as a research assistant, that Ellison’s emotions overwhelmed him. As Ellison recounted, some people initially suggested, after Hamdani disappeared on 9/11, that he had been involved in the attacks. It was only later that his remains were discovered in the rubble of the World Trade Center. He had seen the smoke that morning and rushed to help.

Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com. We Americans spout bromides about freedom. Democracy campaigners in the Middle East have been enduring unimaginable tortures as the price of their struggle — at the hands of dictators who are our allies — yet they persist. In Bahrain, former political prisoners have said that their wives were taken into the jail in front of them. And then the men were told that unless they confessed, their wives would promptly be raped. That, or more conventional tortures, usually elicited temporary confessions, yet for years or decades those activists persisted in struggling for democracy. And we…