Not much of a mystery here.  France and Russia were allies.  War with one meant war with the other, and Germany wanted to strike before they were fully mobilized.

Indeed.  I would think even the Germans would agree the ship has sailed on that one.  The only folks being prickly about this issue seem to be the British, and for no discernable reason other than a knee-jerk impulse to not offend.

This is some strange anti-lip service.  The Treaty of Versailles was specifically designed to lay the blame for the War at the feet of Germany, who had no choice but to accept or resume hostilities, so being unwilling to say so explicitly now is neither here nor there.  Right or wrong, this -- along with the false impression that Germany was never defeated on the battlefield -- lead, directly or indirectly, to World War II.

As Niall Ferguson pointed out in The Pity of War, the purpose for Britain's entry into WWI was to prevent a German-dominated Europe, the primary objective of which was to generate a German-dominated currency zone.  And, after two world wars, we have ... a German-dominated currency zone.  So, well done, Britain, for not even being willing to remember the history that you played a decisive part in.

Ooh!  Ooh!  I know!

No.

Is it okay to be absolutely puzzled why anyone is polling on such inanity?

Thanks for the more prominent MP3 link, Blue Yeti.  It had been bothering me too.

The problem here is with the conditional if.  With the snarky soundbite, few people other than those who agree with us will ever see the bigger context.  Snark sells.

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter Robinson about Berlin 1961.  It's a fantastic book, even if you're a Cold War history buff.  Even bought a copy of it for my friend to read, and he really enjoyed it too.

Speaking of which, since I'm looking forward to Peter's book ... What are his favorite Cold War books?

I usually don't bother getting in political arguments, but I do recall one time at a bar where I was talking with another regular and he was bemoaning how we're destroying the environment and, more specifically, how we're tearing down all the trees.  When I pointed out the simple fact that there are more trees in North America now than there were in 1900, since they're a renewable resource, and -- go figure -- companies that sell you tree products want to make sure they have more trees around to sell you later, he said something to the effect of, "Well that all depends on what a fact really is."  I thought that an appropriate signal that any attempt at serious conversation was over.

I'm with Tom Kirkwold as well.  Issa is presumably trying to get at substantive information.  Instead, he took a rather petty swipe, and he had to know that Holder wasn't going to take it lying down.  Now the entire testimony is reduced to a soundbite of Issa accusing Holder of nefarious activity with no direct evidence, and Holder quite understandably (and predictably) fighting back.  To those not already carefully following the story or familiar with the testimony that was given, it just looks like Issa being a jerk and Holder being defiant.  And, despite whatever complaints you might have about media bias, it makes for good TV.

Thinking Holder is hiding something is understandable; it's perfectly reasonable to suspect it.  But the point here is to prove it.  You don't do that buy giving the other team an easy lay-up.

There's some editing talk left in at about 0:31:00.  I assume that's the Blue Yeti's voice.

I do wonder, though ... If this story finally gets legs (and I do mean if), perhaps the Obama administration will try to hang this around Hillary Clinton's neck.  That could result in a fight to see.

Sorry to say it, but I'm skeptical anything will come of this.  If the media wasn't interested before the election, and wasn't interested after the election, why would they be interested now?

Okay, but this doesn't really explain why he did nothing.  Perhaps he thought that once the election was over people would lose interest and forget.  But he couldn't be sure the media being so uninterested before the election that many wouldn't have heard of it.

The "I suppose" in your conjecture is even stronger for the before, rather than the after.  Granted, of course, we know that the media (largely) wasn't interested in pursuing the story before the election.  But the administration couldn't have counted on that; if the media had reported the story pre-election, the administration would have looked worse.

Well said, Troy.

Even trying to put the details of his politics aside, I always thought he was overrated.  His reviews tended to be predictable; if you knew the premise or subject of the movie, you could pretty accurately tell whether he'd like it or not.  He'd often review the subject of the movie, not the movie itself, sort of defeating the purpose for deciding whether you want to see the movie.  Sometimes he'd focus on tiny little things and ignore the bigger picture, something which we all do, but come on, he's supposed to be a professional movie critic.  His taste is wildly unpredictable:  As a simple but telling example, he hated Die Hard, but loved Die Hard 2 (what?!).  And, of course, there was the infamous episode where he published a (scathing) review of a movie he hadn't even seen and had to apologize for it.

His negative reviews could certainly be funny (his review of North probably being the most famous), but to be honest, when I found out he had won the Pulitzer, I realized that the Pulitzer wasn't really what I thought it was.

Still, RIP.