“In February 2003, the intelligence that August Hanning’s service had handed to Washington turned up in Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council, in the case for invading Iraq. On the morning of 6 October 2026, masked officers walked Hanning, now eighty, out of his house near Münster in handcuffs, on suspicion of attempted treason and espionage. The secrets that undid him had been sitting on a hard drive in that house, and some of them had been shared with Berlin by its allies. The United States is the first of those allies.” (10/09/26)
“The U.S. ends its military campaign in Baghdad after 23 years of fighting. The campaign cost 4,418 US troops their lives and will end up costing nearly $3 trillion through 2050.” (10/09/’26)
“Christa Pike has been discharged from hospital and returned to a Tennessee women’s prison after surviving the US state’s attempt to [kill] her by lethal injection, her lawyers said on Saturday. The 50-year-old is back in the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she had been incarcerated for 30 years. She had been in hospital since September 30 when officials administered two doses of pentobarbital in an attempt to [kill] her. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer.” (10/10/26)
“As the midterm elections approach, it’s safe to say that things don’t look great for Donald Trump’s Republican Congressional majority. He has responded by the usual threats and bluster, but also by promising to send voters money. Now, it should be said that politicians make promises all the time – to voters in general or to more specific constituents. This is part of the process. But sending out quick payments to voters right before an election, and promising a big payday if voters deliver his party a victory, are highly unusual moves.” (10/09/26)
[W]hy exactly is it so bad that screens have destroyed so many people’s ability to focus and read since 1980, and even more dramatically since 2007? What do we lose if people no longer read like it’s the 1770s? Quite a bit, [James] Marriott contends. One significant concern for him is the damage to politics that he blames on the decline of reading: ‘Perhaps the most worrying victim of the Great Simplification is our public discourse. It seems that our distracted and trivial culture increasingly struggles to sustain a rational debate on almost any issue.’ In other words, reading trains our brains to engage with ideas in earnest and to use our attention spans to listen to elaborate arguments and process them afterwards. But those who do not have these skills are unable to engage with serious arguments in the public sphere.” (10/09/26)
“An off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was shot early Friday after he was found sleeping on the lawn of a home in Fresno, Calif., the authorities said. … David Gonzalez, an ICE agent from Texas, had been sleeping on the lawn when a woman returned to her house and saw him, the police said. The woman told her father, who was inside the house. The father, 72, woke up Mr. Gonzalez, who appeared ‘intoxicated and agitated,’ the police said. Mr. Gonzalez then assaulted the 72-year-old man, causing several ‘visible injuries,’ and then assaulted his daughter when she tried to intervene, the police said. The woman’s father then pulled out a firearm and shot Mr. Gonzalez once…. Gonzalez, 32, was charged with felony assault and vandalism, the Fresno Police Department said. He was taken away from the scene in an ambulance and received treatment while an investigation was carried out, the police said.” (10/09/16)
“Rich and Riley discuss televised public executions, libertarian reputation ratings, and this HEADLINE: North Carolina Woman Doesn’t Have First Amendment Right to Publish Video of Cop Shooting Her Dogs, Court Rules.” (10/09/26)
