“Details are emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing that suggest the case will not only be remembered as a local tragedy, but also one with broad political and economic implications,” Politico reports.

“Authorities believe the two suspects may have ties to Chechnya, news that could rock the debate on immigration reform unfolding in Congress. A police officer in Cambridge died in a shooting, two days after the Senate voted down a gun-control bill. And law enforcement has the city of Boston on lockdown, just as billions in across-the-board spending cuts are hitting local authorities.”

Stephen Colbert interrupted the opening of his show last night with a powerful message to Boston.

[Read more…]

Texas Attorney General Greg 
Abbott (R) said President Obama administration and his “political machine” is a bigger threat to Texans than North Korea, the Waco Tribune reports.

Said Abbott: “One thing that requires ongoing vigilance is the reality that the state of Texas is coming under a new 
assault, an assault far more dangerous than what the leader of North Korea threatened when he said he was going to add Austin, Texas, as one of the recipients of his nuclear weapons. The threat that we’re getting is the threat from the Obama administration and his political machine.”

“Is anyone else sick of this shit?”

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

[Read more…]

“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.”

President Obama “urged North Korea to end its brazen nuclear threats against the U.S. and its allies, warning the unpredictable communist regime that his administration would ‘take all necessary steps’ to protect American citizens,” the Washington Post reports.

“Obama’s stern comments came as new U.S. intelligence was made public showing North Korea probably has advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, though the weapon wouldn’t be very reliable.”

New York Times: “It is unclear whether other American intelligence agencies agree with the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has primary responsibility for monitoring the missile capabilities of adversary nations. In the case of Iraq, a decade ago, the agency was among those that argued most vociferously that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons.”

Wearing a cowboy hat, former Vice President Dick Cheney gave Republican leaders a dire warning on the ongoing crisis in North Korea, CNN reports.

Said Cheney: “We’re in deep doo doo.”

However, the former veep “didn’t give any specific policy recommendations or critiques of how the
Obama administration is handling the situation in North Korea.”

Just published: The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti.

Washington Post: “Since the 9/11 attacks, a dramatic shift has occurred in the way the United States deploys its military and intelligence forces.”

FBI agents interviewed former CIA Director David Petraeus at his home in Virginia on Friday, two government officials have confirmed to USA Today.

The interview was part of an ongoing investigation into whether his former mistress, Paula Broadwell, “had received classified information or whether those documents were kept in an unauthorized place… That investigation is taking considerable time to complete, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.”

A member of the secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed raid to kill Osama bin Laden raid in 2011, tells CNN that the story of who shot the terrorist leader as described in last month’s Esquire magazine is false.

He says the story is “complete B-S.”

National Journal:
“No Americans are currently marked for death on the U.S. government’s
terrorist strike list, according to the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee. The White House has wrapped its kill list in
secrecy and already the United States has killed four Americans in drone
strikes. Only one of them, senior al-Qaida operative Anwar al-Awlaki,
was the intended target, according to U.S. officials. The
others–including Awlaki’s teenage son–were collateral damage, killed
because they were too near a person being targeted.”

“A panel of White House advisers warned President Obama in a secret report that U.S. spy agencies were paying inadequate attention to China, the Middle East and other national security flash points because they had become too focused on military operations and drone strikes,” the Washington Post reports.

The panel was led by new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former senator David Boren (D-OK) and concluded that “the roles of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other spy services had been distorted by more than a decade of conflict.”

The New York Times reports the issue of Iran will top President Obama’s agenda when he meets with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Public disagreements between Mr. Obama and
Mr. Netanyahu over how to deal with Iran have waned in recent months.
This comes from a combination of the president’s repeated warnings to
Tehran; Iran’s strategy of not crossing Israel’s red lines while
continuing to build its nuclear program; and changes in Israel’s
political landscape, which have weakened Mr. Netanyahu and made a
unilateral military strike less likely.”

A new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that just 12% of Americans said that they or someone they know was wounded in the Iraq war and only 6% said they know someone who was killed in the Iraq War.

While 52% of Americans said they at least know someone who served in combat in Iraq, 44% reported no personal connection at all to those who did the fighting and dying there.

“A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shi’ite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein,” Reuters reports.

Washington Post: “Haunted by the ghosts of its brutal past, Iraq is teetering between
progress and chaos, a country threatened by local and regional conflicts
that could drag it back into the sustained bloodshed its citizens know
so well.”