Michael D. Brown

You may not recognize this photograph so let me explain. In October, 2007, FEMA staged a fake news conference in which the Deputy FEMA Administrator answered questions from FEMA staff in a setting made to look like a news conference. Everyone was outraged. Yesterday, I was half-heartedly listening to President Obama’s daytime press conference when [...]

While I don’t always agree with The Young Turks, at times I do completely get their point about things on both the left and the right being surreal.   In this case, they’re showing a photo shoot where Glenn Beck is made to cry. Now, Glenn Beck is one of those people I occasionally listen [...]

The protests over the presidential election in Iran just keep on giving fodder for thought. The election and subsequent protests present issues of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, and the rule of law. The protests now have the potential of turning into a revolution, overthrowing the mullahs, [...]

James Fallows over at The Atlantic recently posted this article.    by James Fallows Civilize Homeland Security   THE DEPARTMENT OF Homeland Security should not exist. Its rushed, bipartisan creation in 2002 reflected the political imperative to do somethingin response to disaster, whether or not that something made sense. (See also: case for the Iraq War.) Since then, it [...]

We often don’t stop to think about the social compact that keeps our country together.  Listening day after day to the talking heads screaming at one another, the left vs. the right, the Democrats vs. the Republicans, the conservatives vs. the liberals, DHS’s right wing extremism lexicon, Obama’s birth certificate, and any number of other [...]

We have a classification system within the federal government for many purposes, not the least of which is that some matters are so sensitive that keeping them secret at certain times is necessary to protect national security. Oftentimes that standard has been abused, but in the case of the photographs of alleged torture or abuse [...]

Today at Denver Internationl Airport the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) pulled one of the most boneheaded moves I’ve seen in quite some time.  We’re all familiar with the shoe carnival, right?  For those who haven’t traveled in a while it’s that little procedure whereby everyone takes off their shoes so that they can be sent [...]

Just a little Saturday fun.  If you travel, and you’ve been to these cities or states or know the individuals Jimmy refers to, this is very clever.  For some reason, the Boulder, Colorado promo and the Santa Fe promo are spot on. Enjoy. Thanks to Westword in Denver for bringing this to my attention.  Patty Calhoun [...]

An Evergreen, Colorado firefighter lost control of his tanker truck and lands atop a vintage automobile. Traveling yesterday gave me plenty of time to catch up on my reading. This one slipped by me until I caught up on the newspapers. Congress is considering giving our money to those who want to trade in their [...]

Lt. General Russell Honore’ was dispatched to Hurricane Katrina after I executed a “mission assignment” to the Department of Defense requesting DoD’s support of all logistical issues (getting supplies in-and-out of the area of operations).  After Michael Chertoff ceremoniously dispatched me back to Washington, General Honore’ saluted me and told me “it has been an [...]