Achenblog - The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach on whatever strikes his fancy - April 12, 2009

Those Torture Memos

Sleep deprivation for 11 days. A bug in his box. Waterboarding. Ain't no word for any of this other than torture. I have to second the comment by Andrew Sullivan, who called one of the memos "as chilling an...

Obama's Tax Return

Three things jump out from the Obama tax return: First, he doesn't write off hardly anything on his Schedule C income. Very conservative approach. Were I his accountant I would tell him to write off every cup of coffee he's...

How I'm Rescuing the Economy

I'm putting together a stimulus package you won't believe. Gonna write some big checks. True, some of them will be to sent to non-profit institutions, such as a university, which doesn't seem quite the same as buying a Silverado,...

My Colleague, the Pirate

More sniping: I keep hearing references to the pirates and their "colleagues." For example, here's a story from CBS/AP: "Somali pirates, meanwhile, vowed retaliation for the deaths of three colleagues killed by U.S. Navy snipers in the rescue." And the...

Random Sniping

New sniper rifles can hit a tin can on a fencepost on a different continent: "Now, using .50-caliber weapons, snipers regularly hit beyond a mile, and there's a whole new lineup of weapons between .30 and .50 calibers -- the...

Flapping Counter-Torque

The new pool that has kept Joel from blogging. (Martin Ruetschi -- Keystone via Associated Press) Got a new laptop and am just trying to break it in. It keeps throwing security messages at me, and password-memory prompts, and...

Captain Rescued by Navy

Via Reuters, CNN is reporting that the captain of the Maersk Alabama is free, three pirates dead, one pirate captured. From AP: 'The district commissioner of the central Mudug region said talks went on all day Saturday, with clan...

Achenblog: April 12, 2009 - April 18, 2009