President Obama was on Jimmy Kimmel last night. Both were very funny and entertaining.

Obama did get serious for a few minutes, when he talked about Ferguson, the two officers who were shot, the protesters, racial profiling and the DOJ report. [More...]

Dun Meng, the Chinese national whose Mercedes was carjacked by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, testified today about his ordeal. He said Tamerlan was alone when he carjacked him, threatened him with a gun and then had him drive around for 20 to 30 minutes before they picked up Jahar.

During cross-examination by the defense, Meng acknowledged that Tamerlan was the one who jumped in his car and threatened him with a gun. He said Dzhokhar barely spoke to him, except to ask if the sound system in his car would work with his iPhone.

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Why is no one asking whether the Ferguson shooter might be a lone wolf terrorist?

In November, 2014, ISIS supporters called for using Ferguson as an excuse for lone wolf attacks:

In particular, Al Nusra Al Maqdisiyya, a prominent group of pro-ISIS activists on social media, wrote on its Twitter account: "O lone mujahid, you must use the breakdown of security in #Ferguson to increase the burning in America. They are squabbling over worldly [matters], so you send them to hell! #ISIS.”

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Kim Dotcom has had a few setbacks in U.S. and New Zealand courts recently. Today he won a round in New Zealand. The court released funds from his frozen assets to pay his legal fees and living expenses.

His legal fees are around $4 million. $12 million in assets were seized during the 2012 raid. No news articles yet for details, I'll update when they are available.

It will be several hours before I get back to a computer today. Here's a new open thread, all topics welcome.

Here is the letter Republican senators sent to the leadership of Iran.

Iran responded it has no legal value.

Republicans do not speak for Congress or the President who is Commander in Chief. They should be sanctioned for even writing it.

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks this is unacceptable behavior by Republicans. 155,000 people have signed a petition that the ink happy Senators be charged with treason. [More...]

Pro-ISIS Tweeter and news disseminator Mehdi Masroor Biswas, aka @Shami Witness, arrested in India in December, 2014, is still in custody in India. No charges have been filed. He hasn't had a bail hearing yet. The latest 90 day extension of time to file a charge sheet expires this week.

On March 9, Bangladore police requested an additional six months to file a charge sheet.

A hearing on the request and Shami's petition for bail may be set for next week. How can India hold someone for 120 days without a bail hearing? [More...]

In the latest fallout from DOJ's Ferguson report, Ferguson city officials announced that Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigned today. Ferguson City Manager John Shaw resigned on Tuesday, and Municipal Judge Ronald Brockmeyer resigned on Monday. Jackson's resignation letter is here.

Simon Cottee in the Atlantic interviews top U.S. counterterrorism officials about the daunting challenge the U.S. faces in trying to combat ISIS propaganda war and what it will take to defeat it.

The U.S. State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) was created in 2010 to counter jihadist online media. It's motto, which appears on every powerpoint presentation, is “Media is more than half the battle" and “The war of narratives has become even more important than the war of navies, napalm, and knives.” (The latter is a quote by a dead militant.)[More...]

DC press now pretty much see itself as Hillary's Democratic primary opponent.

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) March 11, 2015

As Laura Clawson deftly describes, the Media is turrible on its best days, but when the Clintons are involved, they reach seemingly impossible nadirs, and stay down there.

There's a lot to question about Hillary Clinton's policy positions, especially, in my view, on foreign policy. But those questions will never get asked by the Media on its own.

The Media doesn't actually care about policy. Partly because it's hard to report on policy. Partly because they don't really care about policy. The only way they do is if a political opponent raises the issue.

More on the flip.

Last Bump and Update: This is the last day I'll be bumping this up to the top. Thanks again to all who contributed, your donations are sincerely appreciated. I'll be sending thank you emails over the next week. [More....]

In the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial today, defense attorney Miriam Conrad reportedly shredded the testimony of FBI agent David Kimball about tweeting during cross-examination. Yesterday, Kimball testifed to a second twitter account Dzhokhar had called Ghuraba and read tweets from it as well as from his first account. The goal was to make Dzkhokhar seem like a "radicalized killer."

That fell apart today. Among other things, Kimball misidentified a mosque in Grozny as Mecca. He didn't know that many of the tweets were rap song lyrics or were quotes from Comedy Central and other shows. He didn't know the meaning of many slang words. (He guessed "mad cooked" meant crazy. It means high.) He admitted he hadn't even looked up the tweets he was testifying about. He just went with what prosecutors gave him. [More...]