Media Should Not Help Stifle Freedom of Expression

Parisians coming together after Tuesday's terrorist attack (Ian Bremmer's Twitter)

There are no words that can sum up the evil visited upon the 12 victims in Paris today, sparked by satirical cartoons lampooning Islam. Those who use violence against innocents to try to prove a point simply lack the intelligence and rational thought to achieve their ends any other way.

And so it is with the these terrorists. They were so offended (on behalf of a supposedly omnipotent and all-powerful being) that they decided to kill the people responsible for publishing a cartoon and anyone who got in their way. The response throughout the day once the news became widespread is yet more evidence that the pen can and will outlast the sword.

A Time to Come Together, Not Apart

A memorial for PO Liu and PO Ramos in Brooklyn. (Source)

Last night's assassination of Police Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos was a tragedy. There is no other way to describe it. Two men simply doing their job gunned down in cold blood as they sat in their cruiser. The killer furthered his cowardly act by turning the gun on himself, escaping the responsibility of answering for his actions. Any sane individual mourns with the city of New York and the NYPD over this senseless tragedy.

A moment like this should unite a city that has already seen such unrest the past few weeks. Unfortunately, pundits, politicians and others who gain from division have jumped on the opportunity to politicize this. Long Island Congressman Peter King (who has previously supported cop-killers) has used this tragedy to point the finger at people like Bill de Blasio and President Barack Obama for their "cop bashing," suggesting some kind of link between yesterday's killer and the president of the United States.

Jake Tapper's Defensiveness Highlights Cable News Shortcomings

This evening a friend of the blog called out CNN The Lead reporter Jake Tapper, on a point about terrorists killing other Muslims in the name of Islam. The following was the last paragraph in a blog post on The Lead's blog about online terrorist chatter regarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370:

"But there's been a very strong push back from some of these jihadist forums that there were Muslims on board, an so taking down an airplane that killed Muslims was at its core an act not supported by Islam," said Jones.

This is a classic bullshit argument by terrorist organizations like Al Qaida, who claim that killing co-religionists goes against Islam and, thus, against their murderous dogma. It is well known that Al Qaida actually murders more Muslims than any other group of people in their terrorist acts, which Nihar called out to Tapper.

Attorney General Eric Holder Must Go

Attorney General Eric Holder (Source: NBC News)

In what has proven an incredibly disappointing tenure by Attorney General Eric Holder, in which he, among other things, claimed that "due process" was not "judicial process," the last straw may have (hopefully) just seen the light of day. NBC News is reporting that Holder personally approved the secret seizure of Fox News reporter James Rosen's private emails.

Unlike the AP case, where Holder has stated that he recused himself because he had been interviewed by the FBI for the investigation, this Fox News case shows how far the Obama administration will go in its quest to control information. That the administration went beyond finding the source of the leak, which was intelligence analyst Stephen Kim, and tracked Rosen's movements to of the State Department to prove he was meeting with Kim.

Could the Tsarnaev Brothers Have Been Stopped?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev (l) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Source: Business Insider)

When the news came out shortly after the marathon bombings that Moscow had contacted Washington about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's 2011 trip to the Caucasus region in Russia, I wanted to wait for more information to surface because of the very tense history between Chechnya and Moscow. Vladimir Putin's history with Chechen separatists is long and incredibly complex, to say the least. All of this is a large grain of salt when it comes to Russian intelligence on any Caucasus separatist movement and alleged members.

On top of this, the separatist movements found in the North Caucasus region of Russia have one enemy in their eyes: Russia. It makes no sense, as some were quick to rush to postulate in the aftermath of the Marathon Bombings, that the Chechen separatist movement would attack American targets. There's a litany of reasons why this is true, but the main is that it makes no sense to attack a country who is usually at diplomatic odds with the country you view as your sworn enemy. It'd be like Puerto Rico attacking Saudi Arabia because they want to be independent from the United States.

Why Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Should Be Tried in Criminal Court in the United States

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Source: USA Today)

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a United States citizen who committed crimes on American soil. This is the beginning and the end of the conversation.

Honestly, I was more shocked than I should have been that people would call to try the surviving terrorist from the marathon bombings as an enemy combatant. I knew some people would say it; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed a heinous crime against innocent civilians and this obviously engenders very strong emotions. But there is a very important reason why Tsarnaev should be tried in criminal court in the U.S.

Publishing Photos of Collateral Damage

Reaper drone (Source: The Guardian)

Last week someone left a comment on one of The Second Age's Facebook page posts about publishing graphic photographs like those taken at the Boston Marathon bombing. My argument in the post about showing the world the horror of that day and other tragedies was that it would allow the true devastation that occurred to be realized by the public. I said that editing photos or not releasing photos because they may be too graphic runs the risk of toning down the public response to the horror.

The comment left made a valid point: "Only if they also publish photos of 'collateral damage' from Predator Drones. Fair and balanced." [Quick editorial note: Because the comment was left on my personal Facebook page, I'm not going to link directly to it in case the commenter did not want his statement put up on the blog.] I agree that publishing photos of the human toll that the ever-expanding drone war that the Obama administration has undertaken would be a service to the public to help people understand on a visceral level exactly what we are doing in non-war zones in sovereign countries.