Tom Cotton

Saturday I did a brief post at the travel blog about the fantastic Museum of Russian Political History in St. Petersburg which I visited a few weeks ago.

Herr Trumpf, tweeting away on his iPhone6, is advocating a boycott of Apple because the company refuses to buckle under to the American National Security State and create a "back-door" so that Apple customers-- including Herr Trumpf-- can be spied on.

This week marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima. A year earlier an American poll that asked what should be done with Japan found that 13% of the U.S. public were in favor of "killing off" all Japanese men, women, and children and after the bombing another poll, this one for Fortune, found that, despite Japan's surrender, 22.7% of respondents wished that more atomic bombs could have been dropped on Japan.

By Mark Jaycox | EFF | May 19, 2015 Three provisions of the Patriot Act expire on June 1 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to delay taking action on the issue by calling for a two month or 5-year reauthorization of Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on […]

The intrinsically embarrassing nature of the Patriot Act came front and center again with the appearance on the national scene of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden. This is a mature democracy? And for Obama... how did he shift from a senator so eloquently critical of unconstitutional surveillance practices to a chief proponent of expanding them?

"On the Ground"? Why, maybe it's because he's so darned tall, but it often seems as if the Man with the Brain of Cotton's feet don't reach to the ground.by KenWe already have a burgeoning tradition of right-wing "intellectuals" like Louisiana Gov. Booby Jindall and Wisconson Rep.

Press TV – April 4, 2015 US Republican Senator Tom Cotton, known for his close links to a neoconservative group, says he will leave no stone unturned in order to sabotage a final nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran. The P5+1 group – the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany – reached an […]

The gods destroy those they call promising.  In this case, there may well be a firming agenda from various circles of praise that seem to be haloing the new, hip shooting Arkansas Senator.  Much of this admiration stems from the simplicity of it all – Tom Cotton, for one, doesn’t want the implications of international diplomacy to be too troubling for US interests.  For that reason, he has left his diplomacy text books at home.  Embrace the inner brute, and feel more comfortable with things.

Tom Cotton now claims he was just joking aroundAnyone who followed Cotton's single term in the House or his campaigns for the House and, last year, for the Senate already had a good idea about what they were dealing with: a manipulative extremist who will say or do anything to advance his childish far right-wing agenda. And he comes wrapped up in a Harvard education with a fancy magna cum laude bow, making it easy to assume he might know what he's talking about.

Judging strictly by his voting record in the House and Senate, freshman Senator Tom Cotton would be dismissed as a brainless extremist bent on demagoguing himself into power. But "brainless" doesn't work smoothly in describing graduates of Harvard-- let alone magna cum laude graduates of Harvard, like Cotton.