We were struck by this passage in the new Rolling Stone profile of Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden:

Snowden has been an undeniable boon for WikiLeaks, which has been struggling financially since 2011… After Snowden went public, donations to the group began to pour in at around $1,300 per day. WikiLeaks now sells T-shirts, mugs and tote bags with Snowden’s face on them (Bradley Manning’s visage, which once adorned similar paraphernalia, has all but disappeared).

Part of what fascinates us is that WikiLeaks was very late to the Snowden story — they did not, and do not, possess any of the thousands of Snowden’s NSA documents, most of which have yet to be revealed.

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With today’s news that the Boston Marathon bombs were packed inside pressure cookers, folks are pointing to sources that say such devices are You-Know-Brown-Skinned-Who’s terror weapon of choice, such as this 2010 DHS report:

Rudimentary improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using pressure cookers to contain the initiator, switch, and explosive charge (typically ammonium nitrate or RDX) frequently have been used in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Pressure cookers are common in these countries, and their presence probably would not seem out of place or suspicious to passersby or authorities.

Well! That certainly settles it! Except…

Because they are less common in the United States…

“Less common”. Meaning not exactly frequent, but not entirely unknown.

And definitely not unknown to the melanin-deprived set:

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No, not the T. Rex or Triceratops in the background, and not the Palaeosaniwa chasing after the baby Edmontosauruses. The aqua critter, lower left:

The small, insect-eating lizard was discovered in the badlands of northeastern Montana — its fossil preserved in an area called the Hell Creek formation. Less than a foot long, it had elaborate teeth with three cusps on each tooth and a slender jaw. Some 65 million years ago, it went extinct. And now, it is named for the 44th president of the United States: Obamadon gracilis.

That’ll lock up the critical eight-year-old boy demographic. And really, it beats a fucking puny fish.

Yale scientists name Obamadon, a slender-jawed lizard, after the President [Boston.com, via TPM]

Welcome to the annals of taxonomy Etheostoma Obama or “Spangled Darter”, one of five new species declared last week by Commie Ichthyologists at Saint Louis University.

The other four? Etheostoma Gore, Etheostoma JimmyCarter, Etheostoma TeddyRoosevelt, and Etheostoma Clinton. You get the idea.

Rumors that the researchers also discovered a bottom-feeding invertebrate named Gastropoda Romney have proven untrue.

Barack Obama Now Has A Fish Named After Him [BuzzFeed]

[via Political Wire]

Our guest columnist is Douglas Brinkley, speaking to Rolling Stone.

We arrived at the Oval Office for our 45-minute interview… on the morning of October 11th.…

As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president.… [S]he said, “Tell him: You can do it.”

Obama grinned.… “You know, kids have good instincts,” Obama offered. “They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.'”

Politico, reporting the Rolling Stone excerpt, also offers a helpful link to “PHOTOS: 21 potty-mouthed politicians”.

Obama says kids know Romney is dishonest [Politico]

We’re supposed to say something about the Obama Administration’s hypocritcal use of Harold and Kumar while clamping down on medical pot shops, and we probably would, except, well, Harold and Kumar.

President Obama’s ‘Harold And Kumar’ Video Draws Marijuana Hypocrisy Charges [TPM]