Latest in Paris attacks
Every hour, it seems, another governor is finding the nearest microphone to proclaim that, after Friday's barbaric attacks in Paris, none of the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the federal government still plans to admit into the United States will be "allowed" into their state.
A string of attacks across Paris late Friday night left at least 129 dead and 352 wounded. The attacks began late Friday evening into early Saturday morning and occurred in six locations, largely co
Here's the video, which I am watching now:
On Saturday night, CBS hosted the second Democratic primary debate of the 2016 campaign. The debate featured Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley and was moderated by John Dickerson, Nancy Cordes, Kevin Cooney, and Kathie Obradovich.
We do not know yet why three coordinated teams of terrorists were able to plan and execute the worst act of political violence on French soil since World War II. There are serious questions that need to be answered about why the attackers escaped detection by the French intelligence services.
On Friday night, as attacks now attributed to ISIS unfolded across Paris, French President François Hollande declared a nationwide state of emergency. This marks the first time since the Algerian war of independence in the early 1960s that France has assumed broad police powers over the entire country. It remains unclear to what extent these expanded powers will affect France’s legal regime after the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history.
In the wake of yesterday’s terrible Paris attacks, will France turn to NATO or the UN Security Council for support? In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, those were the two most significant international organizations to react. France has incentives to turn to both, though its situation right now is dissimilar in important ways from the U.S. situation 14 years ago.
The only photograph that hangs in my attic office is that of René Char, the poet and World War II Resistance fighter. Trying to find an appropriate expression of solidarity with the French people in the wake of the Paris attacks, it seemed right to look to Feuillets d'Hypnos, the wartime diary Char kept during his years of fighting in the Resistance and then edited and published after the war. The diary consists of short poems, aphorisms, epigrams, and brief accounts of Hypnos' (Char's nom-de-guerre) experiences; I've selected a handful that seemed to say something to this moment.
The gruesome events in Paris could strengthen President Obama’s domestic war powers authority under Article II in two ways.
Anyone reading this site probably already knows about the horror unfolding tonight in Paris. But just in case not: Dozens are dead at multiple locations, and there appears to be a Beslan/Mumbai-style hostage crisis underway at this time at a Paris theater. There are reports of at least one suicide bomber. The government has declared a state of national emergency, and the borders have been closed. In the days ahead we likely will learn the identity of the perpetrators and, perhaps, their organizational ties.