"For three years, they've been in the U.S. process being vetted through a variety of security screenings," she said.

Miller said the New Haven-based Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services has agreed to take in the family who landed in the U.S. Wednesday.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy held a press conference after meeting with the family Wednesday. He said the family had a 5-year-old son.

Meanwhile, a GOP Tennessee legislator wants to round up Syrians and hand them over to ICE. A democratic mayor in Virginia sees no problem with reminding us of the Japanese internment success.

At this rate, we might end up with a President Trump. And it's looking like we'll deserve it.

As the article notes, even her opponents don't know the awful screwup of hers and Obama's policy in Libya. How can we get better with such denial and incomprehension of past mistakes?

A good overview of the fighting plus who is rushing into it and who is escaping.

Bonus link for audacity lovers

According to a study by the Brookings Institute dealing with a 20,000 sample size, Saudi Arabia is the top location claimed by Twitter users supporting ISIS in 2015. Syria follows and Iraq rounds off the top three. BUT BANDAR BUSH AND THE GUYS IN THE KINGDOM ARE ON OUR SIDE, RIGHT... ?

Back to the hard-as-nails foreign policy approach?

Will we get bogged down in the Left Bank this time?

When almost 15000 French people died from the 2003 Heat Wave, the conservatives weren't sympathetic, when they questioned our rush into Iraq we turned French Fries into Freedom Fries. But now that Muslim terrorists are involved, the wingnuts will embrace France - at least long enough to wring political points off it.

Some needed stats to inform the conversation. Okay, the Missouri Breaks also refers to the river's effects (gorgeeously presented here) plus a great Brando/Nicholson movie:

If an economic crisis falls in the woods and can't get up, is it still an economic crisis? It is if no one can hear it.

Many progressives struggle with the “lesser-evil” dilemma. They may sympathize with Green Party positions but fear that voting for Green candidates will give right-wing Republicans control of the U.S. government, as in getting George W. Bush close enough to steal Election 2000 from Al Gore, notes Lawrence Davidson.

This is an exponential tragedy, and there is only one person at fault here: Officer Gliniewicz, the officer lovingly referred to as G.I. Joe. His family and his community bear no guilt here. They, too, are victims.

But there are others for whom that claim cannot be made. They are the people who from the beginning went further than any evidence would support in trying to link Gliniewicz’s death to so-called anti-police rhetoric and presidential politics.

Global warming newsworthy event. 

It is expected to drop 12 inches of rain where they only get a few inches a year. So just imagine a hurricane plowing through Arizona and the flooding it would cause. How much damage it would do to the dessert ecology as it washed everything away.

Extreme weather does effect politics. causes unrest and migration.  We are seeing that in Syria with a extreme drought.

If it seems strange that there’s a classic buzzsaw-like tropical cyclone swirling toward Yemen of all places, that’s because it is. We usually see a handful of tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean every year—they’re more common on the other side of India—but storms that form in the Arabian Sea usually don’t get this strong and they usually don’t make it to landfall. Only Cyclones Gonu (2007) and Phet (2010) are recorded to have made landfall on the Arabian Peninsula with winds equivalent to those of a hurricane, but those were both in Oman, and there are no records of a cyclone this strong making ever landfall in Yemen.