Brandon Friedman

Can't wait to tear this down Berlin Wall-style

Everyone involved straight to The Hague

A U.S. Army Soldier with the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), mans a .50-caliber machine gun during a battle in Operation Anaconda, March 4, 2002. The battlefield is in eastern Afghanistan, south of Gardez in the Shah-e-kot mountain range. (U.S. Army photo/Spc. David Marck Jr.)

Gather round, youngsters. This is a combat photo of Operation Anaconda in March 2002, featuring the .50 cal humped in by the lads of D/1-187 for immediate employment. Legends. ⛩️

www.dvidshub.net/image/7/oper...

Not a lawyer, but it seems like Hegseth's explicit order to relax rules of engagement, thereby deliberately endangering civilians, would make this a war crime for which he is responsible. He should he prosecuted as a monstrous war criminal at the earliest opportunity. His order killed 165 children.

Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say Military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday, two U.S. officials told Reu...

"No stupid rules of engagement." — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, March 2, 2026

"The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East." — Reuters, March 5, 2026

Mediaite: Trump Says ‘I Guess’ When Asked if Americans Should Fear Iranian Attacks: ‘Like I Said, Some People Will Die’ Willa Pope Robbins Mar 5th, 2026, 9:17 pm

People: Trump Says 'I Guess' Americans Should Worry About Iran Retaliating on U.S. Soil: 'Like I Said, Some People Will Die' The president was questioned about the unfolding war with Iran for a new 'Time' cover story By Paloma Chavez Published on March 5, 2026 05:23PM EST

Mediaite and People are on it, while I can't find anything about this on the New York Times or Washington Post websites

Obama would've been impeached, convicted, arrested and disappeared within hours of saying something like this

I continue to be gobsmacked at 1) how common this formulation is 2) how antisemitic and generally bigoted it is 3) and how for all the talk of anti-semitism this is never cited as an example even though it’s quite literally the original incarnation.

Cannot wait to see Kristi Noem get kicked out of her Coast Guard house. I hope someone films the movers loading up all her stuff.

The Big Deal You Don’t Know About City Hall After yesterday's marathon meeting, we had some questions about the City Hall discussion. Then we found out this.

The thing you should know about me is that when I'm listening to meetings of elected bodies I make these bullet point lists of things I note to check on later after I've filed my initial story.
This comes from one of those notes:
www.dmagazine.com/micropost/ai...

"Your next one."

Wow.

Good Lord man. Why are @democrats.senate.gov such 🗑️?

Trump just gave Oklahoma Dems such a golden opportunity, filing deadline (unlike most places) hasn't passed yet. Any appointed Sen is easier than Millionaire Mullin

If they wanted to [they don't] they have 4 whole weeks to find someone. Maybe @runforsomething.net has someone great in their rosters

In the Top 10 Funniest Things to Ever Happen in Politics

A diplomatic disaster is unfolding

Before the internet, people regularly only socialized with people they knew and had some reasonable assurance they mostly agreed with. This desire to surround yourself with interesting people that aren't Nazis is not new.

"Indian politician Supriya Shrinate said on social media: 'These Iranian navy men parading at an event in India, were our guests. Invited by us.'"

It is so damning of US news media that so many outlets refuse to just straight up say that Senator Tim Sheehy assaulted an activist.

He did not "help" Capitol police. They did not need his help. He wanted to assault the guy and did. He should resign.

I’ve spent years, decades, obsessing over the Bush Administration’s Iraq WMD lies, writing about them, debunking them.

I can think of no lie about Iraq WMDs told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al that comes even close to the enormity and absurdity of this lie from Donald Trump.

To say the least, it is not typical procedure for senators to join in with Capitol Police to attack protestors.

What the actual fuck man.

My comment: “I don’t think any Democrat can credibly claim to lead the party or the country without opposing Trump’s reckless, lawless war. Honestly, it shouldn’t even be a tough call.”

If it’s a test, it’s an easy one. A vote to fund the war is a vote for the war.

There's only so much unreality that a society can embrace before it simply loses the tether altogether.

I didn't either!

Read this short thread!

What's funny is that I didn't know about the Amazon/Anthropic relationship until now. But the story is such shameless PR that I decided to google it. I knew there had to be something. So I typed in "amazon relationship with anthropic." Et voila!

Amazon's $8 billion Anthropic investment balloons to $61 billion The cloud giant holds convertible notes in Anthropic. As the AI startup raises more money, this debt converts to equity.

If the Washington Post story above sounds like PR for Anthropic, that's because it is! Amazon has invested billions of dollars in Anthropic. Jeff Bezos, of course, owns both the Washington Post and Amazon.

They killed 180 children and their teachers in a double-tap strike on a school. The girls were 7 to 12 years old.

Only two people in world history have ever cleared more mines than me in Minesweeper. I'm ranked #3 in the world for density (as opposed to playing for speed, which has a separate ranking). The two guys ahead of me are a mathematician and a computer scientist.

This also sends a message to House and Senate Democrats: The Capitol Police are not on your side and you cannot rely on them to protect you

Screenshot of a tweet from Mike Berg, Sen Sheehy's staffer saying "Our excellent Capitol Police dropped off a patch for Senator Sheehy after he helped them remove this unhinged protestor from the hearing." with a photo of the patch.

If you're wondering about US Capitol Police's opinion on Senator Tim Sheehy after he attacked a protesting veteran that they were in the process of also attacking... they gave him a patch.

This is what the Capitol Police think of protesters. Remember j6th with that in mind.

Would just note for the record that even Preston Brooks, in attacking Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, did not break any of Sumner's bones