“Is anyone else sick of this shit?”

— Craig Ferguson, visibly shaken about the Boston bombings in his monologue last night.

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“I’ve updated leaders of Congress in both parties, and we reaffirmed that on days like this there are no Republicans or Democrats — we are Americans, united in concern for our fellow citizens.”

— President Obama, speaking on the Boston bombings.

Former Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) had just finished the Boston Marathon when she heard an explosion and turned around to see several people “without limbs,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

Said Schmidt: “I’ve never been so close to death or witnessed it.”

An independent review of interrogation and detention
programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the
practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore
ultimate responsibility for it, the New York Times reports.

President Obama’s decision “to step before cameras despite sketchy information about what happened in Boston just over three hours earlier, clearly reflected lessons learned from the series of terrorist attacks early in his administration: the potential cost of keeping a low profile and waiting is greater than the risk of speaking too soon,” Politico reports.

“However, the content of his three-and-a-half-minute speech Monday–in particular his notable aversion to labeling the incident as ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’–seemed to reflect a continuing desire not to stoke fears or make premature public judgments even as he made sure to offer the public presence that he’d initially avoided during his first experiences managing terrorist attacks as president.”