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When congressional cost-cutters meet later this year to decide on trimming the federal budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could represent juicy targets. But how much do the wars actually cost the US taxpayer? Nobody really knows.

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file - "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.

Many of those preaching at American church services Sunday extolled as "heroes" the 30 American and 8 Afghan troops killed Saturday west of Kabul, when a helicopter on a night mission crashed, apparently after taking fire from Taliban forces.  This week, the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) can be expected to beat a steady drumbeat of "they shall not have died in vain." But they did.  I know it is a hard truth, but they did die in vain.

Educational researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found that schoolchildren can independently develop strategies for solving complex mathematical tasks, with weaker students proving just as capable as their stronger classmates. Researchers in mathematics education worked with approximately 1600 8th grade high-school students in various German states. Following an introduction to the general topic by their teachers, the school children were given a workbook of geometric tasks that they had to solve on paper and using a computer over four school periods. Calculating the surface area of Gran Canaria was one of the real-world, free-form assignments the students had to tackle. The workbook material included explanations and examples of various problem-solving approaches. The teachers took a back seat during the session but were on hand to answer questions from the children, who worked in pairs. After testing the students' skills before and after the session, the researchers recorded a significant improvement in their capabilities. The students learned to apply mathematics more effectively, the researchers said. The students were also able to call on these skills in a further test three months later. "We expected students who were weaker at math to benefit more from a greater degree of guidance through the module," said professor Kristina Reiss.  "But we didn't see a significant difference between these and stronger students." The researchers also found that there were also no differences between boys and girls. "We now know that students - also those who are weaker in math - have the skills to master even very complex subject matters at their own pace," said Reiss. Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a "doomsday mechanism" for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year's even larger military budget. None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you're hooked on massive military spending, it's hard to think realistically or ask the obvious questions. So, at a moment when discussion about cutting military spending is actually on the rise for the first time in years, let me offer some little known basics about the spending spree this country has been on since September 11, 2001, and raise just a few simple questions about what all that money has actually bought Americans. Consider this my contribution to a future 12-step program for national security sobriety. Let's start with the three basic post-9/11 numbers that Washington's addicts need to know:

My entire critique will be from what used to be a completely conservative perspective. You'll know this by the historical figure whom I cite above all others.

America and Oil. It's like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin. As the old song lyric went, you can't have one without the other. Once upon a time, it was also a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence. Now, it's a guarantee of a trip to hell in a hand basket. The Chinese know it. Does Washington?

Why are some people religious and others atheists? Do we really know what we mean by atheism? Here is a very paradoxical clue

Obama hasn't closed Guantanamo and people are still being tortured at Bagram[2], the U.S. is bombing at least six Muslim countries that we know of (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan)[3], and the healthcare bill fiasco in which he had secretly traded away the public option from the beginning[4] very clearly show that he definitely hasn't changed the way Washington works. If anything he's made every conceivable pernicious undemocratic influence stronger.

There are two kinds of people at present: those who know in a vague way that the 1930s was a bad time, and those who have studied the detail and understand the economics of why it went bad.

The biggest problem facing direct action movements is that we don't know how to handle victory. This might seem an odd thing to say because of a lot of us haven't been feeling particularly victorious of late. Most anarchists today feel the global justice movement was kind of a blip: inspiring, certainly, while it lasted, but not a movement that succeeded either in putting down lasting organizational roots or transforming the contours of power in the world. The anti-war movement was even more frustrating, since anarchists and anarchist tactics were largely marginalized. The war will end, of course, but that's just because wars always do. No one is feeling they contributed much to it.

I want to address the issue of "disruption," as Bloomberg is sending this issue out as a talking point brought up on Keith Olbermann's Coundown last night: the neighbors around Zuccotti Square, says Bloomberg, are feeling "disrupted" by the noise and visitors to the OWS protest, so he is going to crack down to "strike a balance" to address their complaints. Other OWS organizers have let me know that the Parks Department and various municipalities are trying to find a way to eject other protesters from public space on a similar basis of argument. Please, citizens of America - please, OWS - do not buy into this rhetorical framework: an absolute "right to be free of disruption" from First Amendment activity does not exist in a free republic. But the right to engage in peaceable disruption does exist.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson 1816

"Pinker talks about the falling levels of violence in the world."

Not just media outlets, but numerous Democratic pundits, heap mockery on the grassroots activism