Radley Balko

The peace president makes the case for forever wars

They were right. Crime spiked during the pandemic, as did traffic fatalities, substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, and blood pressure. A generational crisis that kills a million people will do that. Caving to demagoguery and walking back reform was cowardly and destructive.

Maybe it’s a bad idea to put people in charge of government who are eager for the rapture.

How have crime rates in the United States changed over the last 50 years? Both violent and property crime are far below their 1990s peak, but some crimes see periodic rises.

Looking at the 2024 crime figures, it's absolutely insane how Trump, tech billionaires, and centrist pundits fooled everyone into thinking Biden had turned the U.S. into some Hobbesian hellscape.

50-year lows for violent crime, armed robbery, property crime. Second-lowest homicide rate.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints.

One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

A disturbing and hypocritical ruling on so many levels. Especially the due process holding.

The court JUST said there’s no deeply rooted right for women to control their own bodies. But there is a deeply rooted right for parents to know if their kids question their gender at school? Come on.

She's like an old samurai whose great battles are behind her but every once in a while she kills a man with piece of paper just to prove a point

Bombing elementary schools I guess.

DC journalists have a golden opportunity.

Just say something like "since they will be honoring an avowed enemy of free speech and a free press, I will not be attending the Correspondents' Association dinner this year."

It's telling how many will not, even when handed to them on a silver platter.

Trump/Hegseth operational security: at Joe’s Stone Crab, a restaurant a 2-minute walk from the White House, someone was having a conversation about the attacks on Iran that were going to start in 6 hours. Loud enough for the founder of @TMZ.com to recount it in real time with his podcast cohost.

⚡️ Witnesses Describe Horror Scene After “Double-Tap” Bombing Kills Over 20 at Popular Tehran Square In Iran, the U.S. and Israel are employing tactics used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the “War on Terror” and Trump’s recent attacks on alleged drug boats in the Carribean. Story by @SayahTweets and @MazMHussain for Drop Site News

⚡️ Witnesses Describe Horror Scene After “Double-Tap” Bombing Kills Over 20 at Popular Tehran Square

In Iran, the US & Israel are employing tactics used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the “War...

Story by Reza Sayah & @mazmhussain.bsky.social for Drop Site News

www.dropsitenews.com/p/tehran-ira...

The inference they seem to have drawn from “coercive nation building rarely works out well” is “therefore just create a massive power vacuum and cross your fingers.”

"Flying shards of a better tomorrow" vibes.

of course

Woman sues Kenbridge, police after chief allegedly tipped off shooting suspect The town of Kenbridge and its police department are facing a lawsuit of more than $140 million.

A woman’s ex boyfriend, who is a cop, threatens to shoot her

Women are at the highest risk for being killed when they try to leave a relationship.

She calls 911 for help & the Police Chief WARNS the boyfriend instead.

Boyfriend opened fire on her car

We aren’t angry enough.

Trump took a break from war planning on Friday to hear about Mar-a-Lago guest James O'Keefe's latest scheme.

can’t be more crazy….

x.com/jonkarl/stat...

in the latest example of how we're governed by the Make a Wish Administration, Melania Trump is presiding over a UN meeting

Greg Bovino, other federal agents investigated for Operation Metro Surge actions Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office is already investigating 17 incidents involving potential unlawful conduct by federal agents.

The DA in Minneapolis is investigating Bovino and others.

I hope the firms that capitulated are feeling good and ashamed right about now.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. JUSTICE KAGAN would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE JACKSON joins, dissenting from denial of certiorari. This case asks whether federal law prohibits the poorest prisoners from splitting the $350 fee required to file a federal lawsuit when it allows everyone else to do so. The answer statutorily appears to be no. Because the decision below held otherwise and deepened a split among the Courts of Appeals, the Court should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.

Petitioners Topaz Johnson and Ian Henderson were incarcerated at High Desert State Prison in California when they filed this lawsuit in federal court. According to their complaint, corrections officers forced them and a third prisoner to stand in filthy cages that reeked of urine and measured 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet. They alleged that the officers forced them to stand in those cages for nearly nine hours with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

By a 6–3 vote, SCOTUS refuses to review a judge-made rule that bars indigent prisoners from splitting the filing fee among themselves when filing a federal suit—even though everyone else is allowed to split that fee. These defendants were allegedly tortured. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

"After all, why not... why shouldn't I keep it?"

Trump Administration Moves to Allow Intelligence Agencies Easier Access to Law Enforcement Files “None of this has been thought through very carefully,” one official said of the plans, which upend long-standing restrictions meant to protect Americans’ privacy.

“None of this has been thought through very carefully,” one intelligence official said of plans to share criminal case information with intelligence agencies. “There are a lot of privacy concerns out there, and nobody really wants to deal with them.”

You cannot talk like this about any other minority in America.

And if it was any other president’s adviser who said something like this about any other minority, it’d be the instant end of their presidency.

Only 21% of Americans Support the United States Initiating an Attack on Iran

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/u...

Apparently Pearl Harbor wasn’t an invasion.

Like the neocons, Trump’s neo-neocons repeatedly invoke the West’s complacency and unwillingness to defend its own values, a frailty that can be rectified only through the ritual use of military force against weaker targets. The conservative writer Jonah Goldberg once articulated what he called the “Ledeen Doctrine,” after the neoconservative Michael Ledeen, which was: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Despite Trump’s rejection of George W. Bush, MAGA bears many similarities to the right-wing politics of that era—a fetishization of violence and torture, the treatment of opposition as treasonous, a disdain for due process, and an anti-Muslim bigotry at odds with fundamental American principles.

Pundits loved telling you about Trump's "anti-interventionism" because it seemed contrarian and interesting, but he always represented neoconservatism's worst impulses shorn of any moral pretense or concern www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

In case you haven't been following: The Texas Ag Commissioner is rapidly devolving into a knife fight, with incumbent Sid Miller, fresh off endorsements by Trump and a weightlifter named Tiny Meeker, attacking his opponent Nate Sheets over his alleged porn addiction and whether his honey is organic.

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