Why Russia Is Dying. By Peter Pomerantsev.

The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation. By Peter Pomerantsev. The Daily Beast, April 22, 2013.

Lessons of Boston: What the Fanatics Took Away. By Ralph Peters.

Lessons of Boston: What the fanatics took away. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, April 23, 2013.

Did the Brothers Tsarnaev Fail? By Pat Buchanan. Real Clear Politics, April 23, 2013.

Lessons from Boston and Chechnya. By Dennis Prager. Real Clear Politics, April 23, 2013.

The Real Boston Story. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, April 23, 2013.

Did We Win or Lose the Battle of Boston? By George Rasley. ConservativeHQ, April 23, 2013.


Peters:

The superb work of our law-enforcement officials in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing ignited a blaze of self-congratulation that obscured the event’s implications.

Yeah, we killed one fanatic and nabbed the other. But our dysfunctional system couldn’t prevent this latest Boston Massacre.

That carnage was a dirt-cheap terrorist triumph. Fanatics will take its lessons to their shriveled jihadi hearts:

Lesson No. 1: Two amateur terrorists can paralyze a major American city for days. The Tsarnaev punks generated global headlines, ran up millions in government expenses, punished a major metro-area economy and disrupted society. And now we’ve got a costly civilian trial to come for the surviving brother — with more headlines to inspire copycats.

We’re relieved that the two young terrorists were “brought to justice” and delude ourselves that we “won.” Uh-uh. At the cost of two expendable young thugs, a few guns and a couple of homemade bombs, radical Islam generated a bloodbath that created genuine terror on our soil.

Al Qaeda and its ilk have long used suicide bombers and doomed assassins to rupture societies in the Middle East, killing tens of thousands of Muslims (a fact we fail to exploit in our lame “information campaigns”). Now the Islamists are in the export business. Expect more of these low-cost, high-return missions within our borders.

Lesson No. 2: The best weapons against targets in the US are disaffected legal immigrants or radicalized native-born converts to jihad. Political correctness — a pathetic fanaticism of our own — and legal paralysis make it virtually impossible to stop legal residents such as the Tsarnaev brothers before they commit a crime.

The FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother, after the Russians asked us to look into his radicalization. (Moscow’s murky role is another story.) It appears that the agents asked him, Are you a Muslim fanatic? To which he replied, No. End of investigation.

Get inside the red-white-and-blue tent legally, and you, the terrorist, have a license to kill.

Lesson No. 3: Our immigration system is one of terrorism’s best allies. Related to the last point, this is a case of just how idiotic a politically correct bureaucracy can be. The father of the Tsarnaev punks only had to declare himself an asylum-seeker afraid for his life in the Russian Federation and our consular officials fell all over themselves to get him to America.

Nobody cared that “fearful” Pops retained his Russian citizenship and passport, then voluntarily returned to Daghestan, a jihad-roiled Russian province, to live. Or that his elder son’s dream vacation appears to have been a terrorist training session.

If you’re a highly educated, ambitious West European who wants to become an American, your chances are near zero. If you’re a radical America-hater from a hostile region, all you have to do is shout that you’re a political refugee and we’ll give you residency and benefits.

There’s no reason that anyone from Chechnya should be granted a US visa. It’s a gangster mini-state (within the Russian Federation) at war with home-grown Islamists. There are no good guys. Chechnya’s sole export besides terror, Chechen mafiosi, make Mexican drug cartels look like Franciscans. And some of the cruelest jihadis our troops faced in Iraq and elsewhere were Chechens who joined al Qaeda.

Lesson No. 4: The more open a society, the more targets it presents. We all failed to see the obvious. Obsessing about attacks on the Super Bowl and other facilities-bound events, we missed the appeal of public displays, such as marathons, as targets: 26 miles of vulnerability, tens of thousands of (mixed sex, scantily clad!) runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators.

We’ve done a good job of protecting hard targets, from stadiums to government offices. But that only deflected the fanatics toward softer targets whose very randomness creates authentic terror. And don’t underestimate the appeal of butchering female athletes, who are almost as terrifying to Islamists as girls in bikinis.

You won’t hear that last point from our politically correct authorities or our “experts.” But Freud has more to tell us about Islamist terrorists than any think tank. My suggestion to the feds, if they want to understand why Tamerlan Tsarnaev turned to jihad? Check out this wife-beater’s love life. Scratch a terrorist, find a lonesome perv.

Last week, Islamist fanaticism scored a resounding victory on the cheap. The effectiveness of our manhunt didn’t change that.

Liberals Ignore the Islamist Elephant in the Room. By Rush Limbaugh.

Liberals Ignore the Elephant in the Room, Wring Their Hands Over Where and How These “Normal Kids” Were Radicalized. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 23, 2013. Audio, Daily Rushbo.

Dershowitz: “I Don’t Understand the Way Some People on the Left Glorify American Terrorists.” By Noel Sheppard. NewsBusters, April 22, 2013.

WashPost Suggests It’s Not the Tsarnaevs That Are Sick, But Islamophobic Americans. By Tim Graham. NewsBusters, April 23, 2013.

Boston Marathon bombing suspects elude labels. By Krissah Thompson and Michelle Boorstein. Washington Post, April 22, 2013.

David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker on Boston Marathon bombing investigation and capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Video. Charlie Rose, April 22, 2013.

Tsarnaevs Learned How to Make Bombs from Inspire Magazine. By Pete Williams and Erin McClam.

Boston suspect: We learned how to make bombs from Inspire magazine. By Pete Williams and Erin McClam. NBC News, April 23, 2013.

Boston bombing suspects built explosives with help of online Al Qaeda magazine, official says. By Cristina Corbin and Mike Levine. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.

“My brother made me do it”: Boston “bomber” reveals in scrawled note that older sibling “wanted to defend Islam from attack”- and was motivated by US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By Daniel Bates and James Nye. Daily Mail, April 22, 2013.

Boston bombing suspect cites U.S. wars as motivation, officials say. By Scott Wilson, Greg Miller, and Sari Horowitz. Washington Post, April 23, 2013.

Boston Marathon Bombing Lesson: Political Correctness Kills. By Jay Sekulow.

Boston Marathon bombing lesson –political correctness kills. By Jay Sekulow. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Boston Bombing Suspets’ Islamic Faith Is Irrelevant.

Harris-Perry On Boston Bombers’ Religion: “This Framed-Up Notion Of Islam Making Them Something That Is Non-Normal.” Real Clear Politics, April 21, 2013.

Harris-Perry: Bombers’ Muslim Faith As Relevant To Bombing As Ben Affleck Movies About Violence In Boston. By Noah Rothman. Mediaite, April 21, 2013.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Boston Bombing Suspets’ Islamic Faith is as Irrelevant as Ben Affleck Movies in Investigation. By Jason Howerton. The Blaze, April 22, 2013.

Fear of a different kind when it comes to the wake of terror. Video. Melissa Harris-Perry. MSNBC, April 21, 2013.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Psychologist Anne Speckhard Gets Inside the Minds of the Boston Terrorists.

Psychological Research Gets Inside the Minds of the Boston Terrorists. By Dr. Raj Persaud and Dr. Peter Bruggen. The Huffington Post United Kingdom, April 22, 2013.

Dr. Anne Speckhard website.

Education Does Not Equal Intelligence. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 23, 2013. Rush attacks Anne Speckhard.

Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. on FNC. Video. Sandy Frazier, April 23, 2013. YouTube.




Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. on MSNBC. Video. Sandy Frazier, April 22, 2013. YouTube.




Anne Speckhard: Talking to Terrorists. Video. New America Foundation, March 13, 2013. YouTube.

Anne Speckhard

Topless in the Country of Hijab? By Inna Shevchenko.

Topless in the Country of Hijab? By Inna Shevchenko. The Huffington Post United Kingdom, April 8, 2013.

U.N. Human Rights Official Richard Falk Says Boston Got What It Deserved. By Anne Bayefsky.

UN Human Rights Official Says Boston Got What It Deserved. By Anne Bayefsky. Breitbart, April 22, 2013. Fox News.

Antisemitism, anti-Americanism are UN Human Rights Council official’s job description. By Anne Bayefsky. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.

A Commentary on the Marathon Murders. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 21, 2013. Also at Foreign Policy Journal.

Clarifying Boston Marathon Post. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 25, 2013.

UN Official and Princeton Professor Says Boston Victims Were “Canaries.” Fox News Insider, April 24, 2013. Also find video here.

American Ingrates and Terror Apologists. By Michael Goodwin. New York Post, April 24, 2013.

UN official blames America for Boston Marathon terror attacks. By Hillel C. Neuer. UN Watch, April 22, 2013.

The Demonization of Richard Falk. By Jeremy R. Hammond. CounterPunch, April 25, 2013.

Richard Falk and Radical Islam. Ruthie Blum. Washington Times, April 26, 2013.

Divestment at UCSB. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 16, 2013.

Conservative Philistines? By Mark Blitz.

Conservative Philistines? By Mark Blitz. Hoover Institution, March 13, 2013.

Gentry Liberals and Brass Knuckles: The Case of Maureen Dowd. By Walter Russell Mead.

Gentry Liberals and Brass Knuckles: The Case of Maureen Dowd. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, April 21, 2013.

Questioning the Mission of College. By Frank Bruni.

Questioning the Mission of College. By Frank Bruni. New York Times, April 20, 2013.

Are Top-Tier Colleges Worth It? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, April 23, 2013.

Jew Hatred on NYC Subway. By Walter Russell Mead.

Jew Hatred on NYC Subway. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, April 22, 2013.

Wild Brooklyn melee erupts as NYPD arrests Muslim teen for allegedly taunting Jewish subway rider. By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh. New York Daily News, April 18, 2013.

NYPD vs. man and woman. Video. Bonard Mathurin, April 16, 2013. YouTube.

The Conservative Paranoid Mind. By Michael Tomasky.

The Conservative Paranoid Mind. By Michael Tomasky. The Daily Beast, April 22, 2013.

Boston Is Not 9/11 Redux for American Muslims. By Peter Beinart. The Daily Beast, April 22, 2013.

Scarlett Johansson Is Not an Israeli. By Leon Hadar.

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson Is Not an Israeli. By Leon Hadar. Real Clear World, April 22, 2013.

The Ideology Behind the Boston Marathon Bombing. By Timothy R. Furnish.

The Ideology Behind the Boston Marathon Bombing. By Timothy R. Furnish. History News Network, April 22, 2013.

Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away. By Andrew C. McCarthy.

Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, April 20, 2013.

Mr. President, these are Muslim terrorists. By Michael Goodwin. New York Post, April 21, 2013.

Yes, Of Course It Was Jihad. By Andrew Sullivan. The Dish, April 22, 2013.

Illusions About Why Muslim Brothers Kill. By Bruce Thornton. Real Clear Politics, April 22, 2013.

The Boston Bombing and its Aftermath. By Max Boot. Commentary, April 20, 2013.

GOP Congressman Peter King: “Increase Surveillance” of Muslim Community. By Katrina Trinko. National Review Online, April 19, 2013.

The insanity of blaming Islam. By Marc Ambinder. The Week, April 19, 2013.

The futility of blaming Islam. By Marc Ambinder. The Week, April 22, 2013.

Liberals in Denial Over Boston Terrorists. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 22, 2013.

Professor: Too Much Force Used on Boston Perps. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 22, 2013. Fox News.

Dead suspect broke angrily with Muslim speakers. Evidence mounts of radical turn. By Kevin Arsenault. The Boston Globe. Boston.com, April 21, 2013.

Killing from Qur’anic Piety: Tamerlane’s Living Legacy. By Andrew G. Bostom. American Thinker, October 1, 2005.

Resilience and Complacency. By Fareed Zakaria.

Resilience and Complacency. By Fareed Zakaria. Time, April 18, 2013.

The Horror. The Heroism. By Nancy Gibbs. Time, April 18, 2013.

Republicans Need to Get Over the Makers vs. Takers Mindset. By Scott Rasmussen.

Republicans Need to Get Over the Makers vs. Takers Mindset. By Scott Rasmussen. Real Clear Politics, April 21, 2013.

Rasmussen:

Mitt Romney’s secretly recorded comment that 47 percent of Americans are “dependent on the government” and “believe they are victims” isn’t the only reason he lost the presidential campaign. But the candidate himself acknowledged after the election that the comments were “very harmful.”

He added, “What I said is not what I believe.”

But many Republicans still believe it, and the “makers vs. takers” theme has a deep hold on the party. In private conversations, many in the GOP are whispering that Romney was right and that his only mistake was saying it out loud.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say something like, “Well, the half who favor government programs is the half who don’t pay any taxes.”

This is ridiculous — on many levels.

First, the overwhelming majority of those who don’t pay federal income taxes pay a whole variety of other taxes, including state and local taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, sin taxes and more. They don’t feel excluded from sharing the tax burden just because they don’t pay one particular tax.

It’s also worth noting that these aren’t the people pushing for higher taxes. At Rasmussen Reports, our most recent polling shows that people who make $100,000 or more each year are more supportive of higher taxes than those who make less.

Second, the 47 percent who don’t pay federal income taxes include large chunks of the Republican base. Many senior citizens fall into this category because their primary income is from Social Security. They don’t consider themselves “takers.” They paid money into a Social Security system throughout their working lives and now simply expect the government to honor the promises it made.

Third, low-income Americans aren’t looking for a handout. Among those who are living in poverty, 81 percent agree that work is the best solution to poverty. Most would rather replace welfare programs with a guaranteed minimum-wage job. Sharing the mainstream view, 69 percent of the poor believe that too many Americans are dependent upon the government.

Sixty-five percent of low-income Americans consider it “very important” for an economy to provide everybody with an opportunity to succeed. Interestingly enough, low-income Americans consider that more important than those who earn more.

But if I had to pick just one number to highlight how bad the 47 percent remark was, it would be this. Just 11 percent of Americans today consider themselves dependent upon government. Sure, some receive a Social Security check or an unemployment check, but that’s not dependence upon government. That’s cash received in exchange for premiums paid.

If they want to seriously compete for middle-class votes, Republicans need to get over the makers vs. takers mentality. We live in a time when just 35 percent believe the economy is fair to the middle class. Only 41 percent believe it is fair to those who are willing to work hard. Those problems are not created by the poor.

GOP candidates would be well advised to shift their focus from attacking the poor to going after those who are really dependent upon government — the Political Class, the crony capitalists, the megabanks and other recipients of corporate welfare.

Two Cheers for Web U! By A.J. Jacobs.

Two Cheers for Web U! By A.J. Jacobs. New York Times, April 20, 2013.

Should You Get a Ph.D. By Daniel Drezner. NJBR, April 18, 2013.

Are MOOCs Really Destroying Higher Education. By Walter Russell Mead. NJBR, April 2, 2013.

Professors Grade MOOCs. By Walter Russell Mead. NJBR, March 19, 2013.

MOOCs and Historical Research. By John McNeill. NJBR, March 15, 2013.

The Professors’ Big Stage. By Thomas L. Friedman. NJBR, March 6, 2013.

Ph.D. Problems: Wannabe Professors Need Not Apply. By Walter Russell Mead. NJBR, February 23, 2013.

The End of the University as We Know It. By Nathan Harden. NJBR, January 1, 2013.

Did Tamerlan Tsarnaev Meet With Gadzhimurad Dolgatov, a Known Jihadist Terrorist?

Did Boston bomber meet with known jihadist terrorist? Speculation grows as it emerges Russia asked FBI to investigate Boston bomber just six months ago after his trip to Dagestan. By Leslie Larson and Lydia Warren. Daily Mail, April 21, 2013.

Dead Boston bomb suspect posted video of jihadist, analysis shows. By Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank. CNN, April 21, 2013. Video.

Tatyana McFadden: I’m Racing for Boston.

Tatyana McFadden

I’m racing for Boston: McFadden dedicates London bid to victims of bombing. By Mick Collins. Daily Mail, April 20, 2013.

Tatyana McFadden website.

Boston wheelchair champ racing in London. Video. CNN, April 20, 2013.

Boston Massacre Reenactment Video.

Boston Massacre Reenactment 2007. Video. Northern Platoon, March 19, 2007. YouTube. Also at Boston Massacre Historical Society.




Reenactment of the Boston Massacre in the HBO series John Adams. YouTube.




John Adams at the Boston Massacre Trial from the HBO miniseries. YouTube. Also find another clip here.

Why Grad Schools Should Require Students to Blog. By Maria Konnikova.

Why grad schools should require students to blog. By Maria Konnikova. Literally Psyched. Scientific American, April 12, 2013.

Konnikova:

Whether I’m trying to come up with a new blog post for “Literally Psyched” or a pitch for a magazine or a section in a longer piece of writing, I have to read widely, in multiple areas and multiple sub-disciplines. In popular writing (I don’t love the term, but I’m going to use it here for the sake of clarity, to contrast with academic writing—even though I realize that the two can overlap), there are no rules about what is and is not relevant. I don’t care if something is in “my” area, if it’s truly academic or applied or whatnot. I don’t care about its politics. The only thing I care about when I consider a source is its credibility and the quality of its arguments.

 

I have to distill multiple sources from multiple areas into a compelling, clear narrative. I have to build a case quickly and persuasively and learn to incorporate disparate voices into a coherent argument or conversation. I have to learn to get the gist of an argument quickly and be able to distill papers in a way that will be understandable even to someone who is totally unfamiliar with a topic. Most importantly, I need to create a quality end product: a piece of writing that someone will want to read. Otherwise, not only do I not get paid, but I will have failed at my job. And I have to do this over and over and over again, week after week and piece after piece.

 

What am I doing but honing my ability to think, research, analyze, and write—the core skills required to complete a dissertation? And I’m doing so, I would argue, in a far more effective fashion than I would ever be able to do were I to keep to a more traditional academia-only route.

 

If I just stay in a narrowly-defined academic niche, my writing will be confined to papers for scholarly publication and grants. Those take time and, at least in areas like psychology, research results. You can’t just run one off every few days. Absent those specific outlets, there’s no regular mechanism for developing your thoughts, working out new ideas, thinking about interesting questions that may not be directly related to your field of research, taking the time to wonder about other areas, or having the flexibility to pursue other interests just because they stimulate your imagination. It’s papers for publication, grants for submission, or bust.

 

If, on the other hand, I turn to blogging or other forms of popular writing, not only must I write quickly, coherently, and—and this is really the kicker—consistently, but the way in which I do it forces me to learn to work faster, come up with new ideas more frequently, be less afraid of “foreign” fields, and be comfortable asking constant questions about everything I read. I’m more aware of other disciplines and other literatures than I ever have been. I’m able to digest the academia-speak of disciplines that are not my own far more effectively. Over and over, I use these skills to help me tell a better story—the end game of both a piece of popular writing and an academic one. And because I am forced to write (and think) often, I improve. Constantly.
. . . .

To me, as a blogger, cross-citation is standard practice. I have to do it every day when I research a new blog topic or look at the background for a new piece. It’s natural to include anything that may potentially be helpful—and to put areas in dialogue even if they don’t normally cross over. I don’t feel compelled to stay within any arbitrary academic boundaries; I just use what seems most, well, useful.

 

I’ve been lucky in my academic career. I have a graduate adviser who fully supports my non-academic pursuits—indeed, who encourages them and has, for the last five years, consistently and enthusiastically encouraged me to cultivate outside interests and maintain my intellectual curiosity, wherever it may lead. I had an undergraduate adviser who felt the same way, and encouraged me to continue my studies—and continue my writing, whether or not it had anything to do with academia or psychology.

 

But that sort of attitude is increasingly rare. My advisers are among the select few who maintain that line of thinking (one of the reasons I chose to work with them to begin with). On the whole, academia is quite anti-popular writing—or anything that is not, strictly speaking, in the academic job description. And though I’ve been quite fortunate personally, I’ve experienced this attitude indirectly in multiple ways.

 

I’ve always been open about my external pursuits and interests—and over the last few years, six fellow graduate students have, at various points, reached out to me for advice. They have mostly said the same thing: I’m unhappy. I think I may not want to stay in academia. What can I do? How did you decide that you could work on non-academic writing—and get away with it? Is it something you think I might be able to try, too?

 

Each one had the same story. Each one asked me in advance to maintain his anonymity, to promise that I wouldn’t mention this to any advisers or anyone in the department, or, really, anyone at all. Each one looked frightened lest someone less receptive find them spouting such sacrilege. The whole thing made me incredibly sad. These were exceptional students, and they didn’t have anyone with whom to discuss important life decisions. They felt trapped, like they couldn’t say what they really wanted or express how they really felt. And because of that, they had lost their appetite for research that had before been stimulating. They had gone from incredibly excited to ready-to-quit.

 

It made me sad—but believe me, I know exactly why they did it. It’s the same reason why we have so many anonymous bloggers, who would rather publish under a pseudonym than risk the wrath of the establishment – or make even more tenuous the already tenuous possibility of ever getting considered for a tenure-track job.

 

Academia as a whole is still quite skeptical of popular writing and anything that takes time from serious academic pursuits. These include reading articles in your discipline, reading publications and books by your field leaders and co-workers, working on writing up your own studies for publication (the more and the faster, the better), and networking and presenting your work at academic conferences. Having a blog? Freelancing on the side? Working on pieces for the non-academic, a.k.a, popular, press? Not very high on the list. In fact, in direct opposition to the list, as each of these pursuits takes time away from what you should be doing.

 

It’s a shame—and it’s counterproductive. Instead of frowning upon blogging, popular writing, any intellectual pursuits that don’t seem immediately and narrowly academic, wouldn’t it make sense for academia to embrace it all – and embrace it enthusiastically?

 

I would argue that the best thing academia can do for its students is to encourage such pursuits to the greatest extent possible. In fact, I’d go a step further: incentivize students to blog and to write for a popular audience on topics that go beyond their immediate area of interest. At Columbia, for instance, we can write a grant for one of our comprehensive exams. Why not let a series of published blog posts count as well? It gets the student thinking and writing–and gets him a byline in the process.

 

In following this strategy, you will be teaching your students skills that will make the process of dissertation writing—the point where many students drop out of their programs (according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of students will quit their doctoral programs; Chris Golde, the research director of the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate at the Carnegie Foundation, estimates that 1/3 of that attrition will happen at the dissertation-writing stage—although the numbers vary by discipline, demographics, and other factors)—seem far less daunting and stressful, far more manageable and approachable, than it otherwise would. What’s more, it will make not only that dissertation but any piece of academic writing that much better, clearer, and more solid. Clear writing is the product of clear thought. When you write for the purpose of explaining, when clarity is your goal, you learn to hone your thinking and work through the complexities of arguments in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise be forced to do. When you write every day, you improve, and you keep improving.

 

People with good writing and research skills are rare. People who cross disciplines and read widely are rare. But don’t we need these people for academia to thrive? After all, many times, the greatest innovators are those who bring in fresh eyes and the perspectives of fresh disciplines: they are less likely to be myopic and be constrained by lines of thinking that are area-specific—and more likely to see patterns and connections that are invisible to the insiders.

 

The single best training and preparation I could have possibly had for writing my dissertation was the exact training and preparation I received in my career as a blogger and a writer. I just hope that others can have that same experience, and that in the future, my path will be the rule rather than the exception.



Humanities aren’t a science. Stop treating them like one. By Maria Konnikova. Literally Psyched. Scientific American, August 10, 2012.

The Humanities and Common Sense. By Roger Berkowitz. NJBR, February 20, 2013.

Maria Konnikova

Blue Civil War Goes National. By Walter Russell Mead.

Blue Civil War Goes National. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, April 20, 2013.

Fault Lines Loom for “Dominant” Dem Majority. By Sean Trende. Real Clear Politics, April 19, 2013.