What a cool video --- I had never before seen a video of Helen Keller, much less one where she speaks.

If you need drones, we've got drones. Apparently, this shoudl be our new national motto, according to this NYT article:

"Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies."

In this thoughtful article at Pro-publica, Charles Ornstein discusses our need to come to grips with end of life decisions:

[T]he high cost of end-of-life care is an issue worthy of discussion. About a quarter of Medicare payments are spent in the last year of life, according to recent estimates. And the degree of care provided to patients in that last year — how many doctors they see, the number of intensive-care hospitalizations — varies dramatically across states and even within states, according to the authoritative Dartmouth Atlas. Studies show that this care is often futile. It doesn't always prolong lives, and it doesn't always reflect what patients want.

The headline from The Onion: "Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal."

WASHINGTON—As they scoured the Internet for more juicy details about former CIA director David Petraeus’ affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, Americans were reportedly horrified today upon learning that a protracted, bloody war involving U.S. forces is currently raging in the nation of Afghanistan.