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...]

Sky News has a new interview with an Isis defector who says in very broken English he worked as a translator for ISIS, attended the killing of Japanese hostage Kenji Goto, and then ran away to Turkey. He is referred to as Saleh, which is not his real name. More details are here.

Salah describes Emwazi, whom he calls John, as "the boss" of the foreign hostage killers. He says John is with ISIS' media arm. He says anyone is allowed to kill a Syrian, but only John executes foreigners. [More...]

ISIS has been promoting a new video by al Furqan Media all morning about the execution of a captured Mossad agent. An interview with the agent, Muhammad Sa’īd Ismā’īl Musallam, was featured in the latest issue of Dabiq magazine (Issue #7, described here). He said he was the only Arab in his unit, the others were Jewish.

Clearly designed to shock, in the now released video, which I won't link to, a child soldier kills the orange clad prisoner while standing right in front of him. He stares coldly at him and shoots him in the forehead. Then he fires more bullets into him and shouts "Allahu Akbar" as he raises his arm in triumph. [More....]

You can watch it here.

Anyone think she's not running now?

Our last open thread is full. Here's a new one as I catch up on the news, all topics welcome.