Chicken captured near secure Pentagon area

An avian intruder was nabbed near the Pentagon early Monday morning. The chicken was intercepted and captured by security forces. Defense Department officials denied the feathered interloper intended harm to Colonel Sanders, and called any links between Chicken Kiev and the Ukraine crisis pure speculation.

The furtive fowl was tentatively identified as a Rhode Island Red, but communist ties are not suspected. Predatory poultry has been increasingly responsible for rogue incidents of urban terrorism over the past decade, as growing numbers of likely recruits have roosted in backyards across America, and are egged on by bandit bird ringleaders.

More:

“Chicken captured near secure Pentagon area,” Martin Weil, Washington Post

“The Inside Story of Pentagon Chicken’s Capture,” Tori Bergel, Washingtonian

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9-11 Urban Legacy: Cities of Bollards

“It used to be that D.C. architecture consisted of graceful Georgetown mansions, neoclassical federal buildings — and, of course, the monuments. When the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was founded in 1910 to guide Washington’s architectural development, it reviewed designs such as those of the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Triangle. Over the seven years I’ve served on the commission, however, an increasing amount of time is spent discussing security-improvement projects: screening facilities, hardened gatehouses, Delta barriers, perimeter fences, and seemingly endless rows of bollards. We used to mock an earlier generation that peppered the U.S. capital with Civil War generals on horseback; now I wonder what future generations will make of our architectural legacy of crash-resistant walls and blast-proof glass.”

— Wittold Rybczynski, Meyerson professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.

Read more:

“The Blast-Proof City,” Wittold Rybczynski, Foreign Policy

“We Built DC Into an Urban Fortress After 9/11. And January 6 Proved It Was Penetrable.” Jane Recker, Washingtonian

“I Came, Eyesore, I Conquered,” Witold Rybczynski, Slate

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Trump Travel Ban Protects US From Terrorist Grannies

The U.S. Supreme Court, now with Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch on board, has ruled that a modified version of Donald Trump’s travel ban can go into effect for 90 days, as of yesterday evening. Travelers from six majority-muslim countries, none of whose citizens have committed terrorist acts on United States soil, must now document “bona fide relationships” with U.S. persons, companies, or institutions in order to travel to the USA.

The Trump administration has issued directives defining “bona fide relationships,” and the weirdest ones involve families of of U.S. citizens and legal residents. Some relatives may travel to the USA: Spouses, children and stepchildren, siblings and stepsiblings, parents and step-parents, father-in-laws and mother-in-laws, fiancées and fiancés. Who may not travel: Grandparents, grandchildren, sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, or cousins.

This is a pretty strange definition of “family” by any standards. Remember, little Donnie Trump grew up across the street from his own immigrant grandmother in Queens, NY.

Update:

At the last moment, fiancées/fiancés were added to the good-to-go list, perhaps after lobbying from the mail order bride industry or because the president likes to marry foreign models?), and text above has been updated. But how can these relationships be documented? The Bridal Registry at Crate & Barrel? Engagement ring receipts from Kay Jewelers?

More:

“Stepsister, Yes; Grandma, No: U.S. Sets Guidelines for Revised Travel Ban,” Gardiner Harris and Ron Nixon, New York Times

“Travel ban’s ‘bona fide relationship’ test could open legal floodgates,” Lauren Pearle and Connor Finnegan, ABC News

“The Supreme Court Partially Allowed Trump’s Travel Ban. Who Is Still Barred?” Alicia Parlapiano and Anjali Singhvi, New York Times

“The travel ban going into effect would have saved zero lives from terrorist attacks in the last 20 years,” Philip Bump, Washington Post

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Image: If Granny Clampett is Muslim, she can kiss Beverly Hills goodbye.

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Mass Surveillance

Anti-terrorism mass surveillance practices examined by Kurzgesagt (German for “in short; in a nutshell”).

More:

“What’s the Evidence Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much,” Lauren Kirchner, Pro Publica

“Peekaboo, I See You: Government Authority Intended for Terrorism is Used for Other Purposes,” Mark Jaycox, Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Nuts! The Threat to Our Nation’s Infrastructure

For years now we’ve told you, and told you, and told you yet again about a persistent threat to America’s infrastructure. Now that the New York Times has caught up, maybe now you’ll listen.

This year there have been stealth attacks on the electric power grid in Virginia, Illinois, Delaware, Virginia, Oregon, Ohio, Maryland, and dozens of places across the country, and they continue. These attacks on electrical substations are predictable and avoidable, yet nothing is done to avert them. Perhaps if we claim they are caused by Iranian hackers we can get relief.

More:

“Squirrel Power!” Jon Mooallem, New York Times

“Squirrels and electricity: A shocking problem,” Bruce Kennedy, MSN Money

“How squirrels are screwing with America’s power grid,” Katie Drummond, The Verge

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Tweets of Terror

“Imagine you’re a human rights activist working for an NGO in Sri Lanka. After a hard day’s work in a humid office building, you walk into your apartment, fire up your laptop and fire off the following tweet:

 ‘Holding workshop with @LTTE and Sri Lankan govt. about easing roadblocks for medical supplies to be trucked in. Conf. going well, God-willing.’

 Congratulations, you’re now a terrorist.”

— “Terror Tweets,” John Winn, OhMyGov!

Washington, City of Bollards

“It used to be that D.C. architecture consisted of graceful Georgetown mansions, neoclassical federal buildings — and, of course, the monuments. When the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was founded in 1910 to guide Washington’s architectural development, it reviewed designs such as those of the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Triangle. Over the seven years I’ve served on the commission, however, an increasing amount of time is spent discussing security-improvement projects: screening facilities, hardened gatehouses, Delta barriers, perimeter fences, and seemingly endless rows of bollards. We used to mock an earlier generation that peppered the U.S. capital with Civil War generals on horseback; now I wonder what future generations will make of our architectural legacy of crash-resistant walls and blast-proof glass.”

— Wittold Rybczynski, Meyerson professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more:

“The Blast-Proof City,” Wittold Rybczynski, Foreign Policy

“I Came, Eyesore, I Conquered,” Witold Rybczynski, Slate

Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-b6L

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Big Border Bologna Bust!

In a stunning security coup, agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service seized 385 pounds of bologna sausage at the New Mexico border last week. Officials bagged the bologna bandit as he sought to smuggle illicit lunchmeat into sleepy Santa Teresa, NM (population 2607).  The contraband cold cuts, with a street value of $2,700, were seized and destroyed before they reached the lunchboxes of innocent American schoolchildren.

Yet, for each bologna bagged at the border, surely six salamis slither across. Mr. President: where is our Border Wall?

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Proven: The Terror Baby Menace!

 

At last, scientific vindication of the Terror Baby menace, the wave of pregnant terrorist tourists coming to our country and dropping their evil spawn amongst us to bomb us into oblivion. This threat to National Security was first brought to our attention by Congressman Louie Gohmert (R, TX-1) . Mr. Gohmert discovered this phenomenon through the actual chit-chat of an actual foreign woman during an actual overseas airline flight.

Now the Center for Immigration Studies, America’s most official-sounding xenophobic “think tank,” has released a scientific study, based on scientifically-selected editorials, which expresses Islamic Infant Terror Tourist Tactics in actual Arabic Numbers. It reveals that millions of fecund foreign females cross our borders to study and vacation in our fair land and, given their unAmerican high fertility rates, they undoubtedly eject infants before departing. Simple arithmatic shows that as many as 200,000 infant invaders can be be born here under the flimsy cover of legitimate tourist and student visas. These baby bombers can claim U.S. citizenship after a mere 21 years and dissappear amongst us to menace our precious malls and McDonald’s.

Walls of Washington

“Security concerns have transformed Washington, taking a city envisioned as the physical embodiment of the openness of American democracy and turning it into a garrison town that is increasingly inaccessible to the general public.”