Belgian authorities have identified the three suicide bombers involved in yesterday's attacks in Brussels: brothers Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Khalid el-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui. All three were Belgian citizens.
Laachraoui is suspected to have been the bombmaker for the Paris attacks in November. That makes his suicide unusual: Bombmakers are usually too valuable to a terrorist operation to blow themselves up.
The el-Bakraouis fit a pattern. Sets of brothers were also involved in the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris last year and in last November's attacks, and studies show that the radicalization of family members is the most important factor in whether an individual will become radicalized.
It's now facing the awkward truth that its failure to catch them (and its failure to apprehend any of Salah Abdeslam's associates when he was arrested on Friday) might have made this attack possible.
During his visit to Argentina Tuesday, President Barack Obama confirmed that his administration will release more diplomatic and military records about the US's role in Argentina's "dirty war" (which lasted from 1976 to 1983).
Under the military junta that took power in 1976, up to 30,000 people were killed or "disappeared" — and the country's still struggling to discover exactly what happened and bring justice to the victims.
The US's role in the conflict is unclear. A 2002 document release appeared to show Henry Kissinger urging Argentina's foreign minister to crack down on internal dissent "quickly."
Much of the credit for bringing the dirty war to international attention goes to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group that organized to call attention to the government's practice of kidnapping children (some of them the children of imprisoned mothers who would later be disappeared) and giving them up for adoption.
The Grandmothers and other groups are still active, and have been concerned that the new conservative government of Argentina was going to sweep the dirty war under the rug — fears that appeared to be confirmed when Obama's visit was scheduled to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the junta's coup.
Instead, not only will the US be opening up its archives, but so will the Vatican — a decision that's particularly interesting because questions have swirled about the Catholic Church's possible collaboration with the junta, and because Pope Francis was a priest in Argentina at the time.
Jeb Bush endorsed Ted Cruz Wednesday, in the clearest sign yet that the Republican establishment is rallying around Cruz in the hopes that he will stop Donald Trump. (He almost certainly won't.)
Bush's endorsement, Dylan says, is a reminder that for all the things Republican elites find distasteful about Trump, his racism is not high on the list.
In other futile attempts to regain control of the GOP, Paul Ryan gave a speech on "the state of American politics" today. It was an eloquent denunciation of obstructionism, but it also made absolutely no reference to what's actually going on in the party right now.
When you're as widely disliked as Ted Cruz, pop culture is a potent way to relate to other people. That makes Cruz's cultural allusions all the more revealing, and kind of poignant.
"Regular, straight pop culture has liberally lifted things from gay culture as long as I can remember. And that's fine, because guess what? We have so much more where that comes from."
"I got kicked out of school when I was seven years old. I refused to salute the flag because my great uncle had been lynched with the flag wrapped around his body. So I went back to Sacramento and said, 'I'm not saluting the flag.' And teacher went at me and hit me, and I hit back. And then we had a Joe Frazier/Muhammad Ali moment right there in the third grade."
