Obama plans to send mercenaries to Iraq so he can deny he is sending ground troops there.

Mercenaries are troops.

The UK government celebrates the 1914 Christmas truce because it doesn't threaten the idea of war. Contrast it with the reception of acts and movements that did.

Democracy protests in Hong Kong have resumed and thugs arrested dozens.

A public hospital in Alabama makes patients waive their legal right not to be sued for hospital bills.

I don't think poor indebted Americans should feel the slightest shame about using bankruptcy to escape the medical bills that a civilized country would never have tried to impose on them.

Meanwhile, I wonder whether the hospital's contract with these patients is valid. If the law says hospitals can't do something to their patients, can the hospitals set it aside just by getting the patient to say yes?

Obama continues to claim that the war in Afghanistan made the US safer.