Hope y’all like the new layout of the blog. Take a few minutes to get comfortable. Take off your coat, your shoes and your troubles. Now have a glass of red wine and a look around.

1. IRS specifically targets conservative Tea Party groups; So the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein naturally defends the IRS for not doing more: Listen to the fascists sing
2. Ken White has an update on the man who made the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims”
3. Dear life (gun control and gun violence). Again and again: gun violence has been declining for about two decades now.
4. The Crushing of Middle Eastern Christianity
5. A Brutal Peace: the Postwar Expulsion of the Germans
6. Barack the buck-passer. A laudatory account of Obama’s foreign policy that I largely agree with.