Good Morning:
The estimable Dave Levitan offers a bit more explanation about what happened to the much-less-estimable Jim O’Neill while he was trying to give a speech the other night. The whole thread is informative and included some information of which I was unaware:
Per a source with knowledge, the people responsible also put little notes with the speakers, reading: "Dedicated to the Americans who continue their tireless daily fight for our health."
"Dedicated to America's history of progress in science and medicine." and...
…
"Dedicated to the Americans who every day put science, health, and truth first."
I am told this was an attempt to send a message to the new CDC leadership that "what they are doing is a laughable joke." A small act of resistance from fed employees, perhaps, but it's something.
I repeat my comment on the episode: heh heh heh.
Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable
, the assembled Greek Chorus, and I discussed the fact that Charlie Kirk is dead:Friday’s episode is notable for having received
’s favorite Dog Shirt TV comment of all time:
Juvenile? Undeniably. But there is something truly elegant about a perfectly crafted juvenile pun. I note that I beat this punster to the pun by some time:
The Situation
In Thursday’s “The Situation” column, I break down how chaotic leadership, a preoccupation with social media, deprioritized domestic terrorism prevention, and the large-scale reassignment of agents to immigration enforcement make the FBI less effective at investigating and preventing political violence.
Having reassigned roughly 20 percent of the FBI’s agents to immigration matters will not create personnel shortages in the Kirk investigation—at least not now. Today, this investigation is getting the all-hands-on-deck treatment. If there aren’t enough agents to do a thing, more will get assigned. And this will include, according to the New York Times, Patel and Bongino themselves, who are heading to Utah to “more directly oversee the manhunt.” There is no resource problem now on the Kirk investigation.
But what about yesterday before the shooting?
We used to care about, as the military guys like to put it, “getting to the left of boom”—that is to say, being in a position to preempt terrorist crimes. But over the past few months, the administration has made two very public policy decisions that raise questions about whether we still care about preventing crimes like yesterday’s.
In Sunday’s The Situation column, I do something extraordinary: I give Trump sincere credit and thank him for a job well done an issue very close to my heart:
I am convinced that Trump deserves real credit for the freedom of Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Princeton graduate student held hostage by Kataeb Hezbollah—an Iranian proxy militia in Iraq—for the last two and half years.
More importantly than my conviction on this subject, Elizabeth’s sister—Emma Tsurkov—is emphatic on the point. She and I have been texting over the last few days, and there are important lessons in the story she tells about how Elizabeth came to be free.
I still don’t know the precise details regarding the circumstances of Elizabeth’s release last week. It is clear to me, however, that one way or another, Trump’s role—along with that of his hostage envoy Adam Boehler—was decisive. That is not a comfortable thing for me to say. I don’t relish giving Trump credit for anything. But he got this one right, and he did it in a fashion that should embarrass the previous administration.
The result is that someone I care about is alive and back with her family today. It would not be honest of me not to reckon with that.
Friday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo.
Obedience to Civilian Authority Is Dangerous Too
Graham Parsons—in response to Kori Schake and Jason Smith’s criticisms of his May 9 Lawfare piece—argues that military political neutrality could obligate service members to disobey a legally issued order from civilian authority.
Am I, as Schake and Smith claim, advocating military praetorianism—the idea that the military has a special responsibility to ensure the constitutional fidelity of the government? No. Saying that service members should disobey clearly anti-democratic orders is not saying that it is the military’s job to review the constitutionality of all government actions. That is the role of courts and, less directly, elected representatives and citizens. I am only saying that if these safeguards fail and the military is sent to attack civil society, service members need not always be bound to obey. My proposal is not intended as a structural “fix.” I am only talking about what service members should do in emergency situations, not proposing a new political order.
Also, I clearly say that if service members are to disobey, they should do so civilly by willingly submitting to punishment that is within the powers of authorities. This limits service member’s reactions to passive refusal and prohibits active interference with or a general rejection of civilian authority that might lead to a military coup.
Exploiting Authorization Sprawl Is the New Black
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren describes the Salesloft Drift breach and the rise of “authorization sprawl” attacks, Apple’s recent Memory Integrity Enforcement upgrade, federal efforts to curb scams and ransomware, and a post-data breach pay cut for executives at the Australian airline Qantas.
The Salesloft Drift breach is a great example of the sprawling impact that a breach of a single service provider can have. Given that modern business models routinely involve software-as-a-service, these kinds of single-compromise-large-blast-radius attacks will become the new norm.
Salesloft's Drift application is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot used by companies to convert website visitors into sales leads. Because it is typically integrated into Salesforce, its recent compromise has resulted in the theft of a large volume of Salesforce data from potentially hundreds of organizations. That stolen data also includes authentication tokens for various other services.
Podcasts
On Scaling Laws, Steven Adler and Kevin Frazier discuss the state of artificial intelligence (AI) model testing, the meaning of AI safety, and pathways to sound AI regulation.
Documents
Katherine Pompilio shares the heavily redacted search warrant affidavit licensing the FBI’s search of John Bolton’s home.
Videos
On Sept. 12 at 4 pm ET, I sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Eric Columbus to discuss a federal appeals court ruling upholding the $83.3 million judgment against the president for defaming E. Jean Carroll, the Supreme Court decision to stay a lower court’s order limiting immigration enforcement in California, and a preliminary injunction granted in Lisa Cook’s challenge to her removal from the Federal Reserve.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the goat, seen here being wrangled by Baltimore cops:
According to the Baltimore Police Department:
On September 13, 2025, Southwest District patrol officers were called to the 3000 block of Frederick Avenue for what was called an "Animal Disturbance".
Once there, officers located several goats in the block, grazing on the grass.
Additional Officers and Animal Control responded to the scene, successfully wrangling up the goats into a confined location and attaching them with leashes.
With the assistance of neighborhood children and community members, the goats were returned to their home a block away.
Nice work by all involved.
In honor of today’s Beast, endeavor to create an Animal Disturbance.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Dog Shirt Daily to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
 | A guest post by
|