For leaders at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the planned retirement from teaching of former Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers will be a great loss.

Ayers, who has served as an education professor at UIC since 1987, is celebrated on campus for his academic contributions, particularly in the area of school reforms, said UIC education Dean Vicki Chou.
“He’s been really a very good colleague here,” Chou said. “He has hundreds of students who really cherish that they’ve had the experience of being taught by him.”
“(But) over the years, you just …

Months ago it was leaked that Leon Panetta was called out of a White House Meeting so he could personally authorize using a drone missile to eliminate a high ranking Al Quaeda operative. He signed off, even though it also meant killing the wife of the target. And this was reported as if it were the end of the day Dow Jones averages.

After that reportage we were told about the Russian spies in New York and New Jersey, something I still haven’t been able to figure out. …

The U. S. government urged Scottish ministers that it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber and allow him to live in Scotland rather than in Libya reported The Daily Australian quoting the London newspaper (firewalled!) The Sunday Times—contradicting a statement by President Obama that “all Americans were surprised and angry” when the bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was released to Libya because he was at death’s door with advanced prostate cancer and had only three months to live. After he was released, a doctor in Libya said …

I was sitting in a hotel room in Vegas watching CNN when the news broke about a light plane crashing—quite intentionally—into that Austin, Tex., building where 200 Internal Revenue Service employees worked. In minutes they had the name of the American kamikaze pilot and quotes from the rambling suicide note he left on the internet.

Andrew Joseph Stack III also set fire to the home he shared with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, who recently split because he had been acting strangely of late.
Stack, who worked free-lance in computer technology, had …

On a dark winter’s night so snowy
Who wouldn’t go to a poetry showy?
Hosted by McHenry County College
Showcasing terrorist’s emotions and knowledge
Be prepared  to be charmed when you go
to hear Marc Falkoff present “Poems from Guantanamo”
And hear the tales and lore
at 7 p.m. Feb. 4
If it is a mullah’s wisdom that you seek
Come hear the former detainees speak

From the White House
Sec. 3. Closure of Detention Facilities at Guantánamo. The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order. If any individuals covered by this order remain in detention at Guantánamo at the time of closure of those detention facilities, they shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the …

I have just discovered the newest Republican strategy. Possibly it is even larger than a strategy. It may be a belief system.
I speak here of the magical power of incantation.

Soon after the underpants bomber proved himself no more skilled than the shoe bomber of yore, the recent ex-vice-president snarled with his most ferocious, fang-baring snarl that Barack Obama has made us less safe because he never uses the ex-v-p’s favorite phrase, “the war on terror.”
Quickly the right-wing echo-chamber was bubbling and seething with the sentiment. Congresspersons, broadcasters, tea-sippers and …

The State Department says it has revoked the U.S. visa of the Nigerian man suspected of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa was one of several the agency has revoked since the Dec. 25 incident as the result of a review into security procedures ordered by President Barack Obama. Crowley would not say when the decision on Abdulmutallab’s visa was made or how many others had been withdrawn.
HT James Taranto

For longer than many people have been alive, David Broder, 80, originally of Chicago Heights, Illinois and Bloom township high school, has been referred to as the Dean of the Washington press corps. I’ve known Broder of The Washington Post for four decades but always reserved my leaks to Bob Novak because (a) Novak would know what to do with a juicy tidbit and (b) Broder specializes in Deep, Deep thumb-sucking opinion pieces that make fresh news bytes seem oddly tacky and inappropriate.

Broder’s deep-set intellectual’s eyes range far-far away from …

At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.
The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.
Read more at the London Times
Read more about Thomson Prison