National Security, Punk Rock Get a New Home

Screenshot courtesy of Rachel Maddow

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If you don’t know Spencer Ackerman, here’s a great chance to start. A vet of the New Republic, Talking Points Memo, and the Washington Independent, Ack recently found a new home anchoring Noah Shachtman’s and Wired‘s fantastic national security blog, Danger Room. Besides me, he’s the only semi-Semitic tattooed Black Flag-loving left-of-center defense reporter I can think of. And he’s the more talented one.

Since 2008, Ack’s also blogged odds and ends on Attackerman, a FireDogLake blog (full disclosure: I guest-blogged for him a bit last year). But owing to some hand-wringing over congressional media credentials, he’s reluctantly moved that blog to a new site. If you’re intrigued by such headlines as “The Rick James Approach to Security” and “Sink, Florida, Sink!” (and you should be), then check him out at his new place. The community of progressive security watchdogs is small; y’all might as well get to know each other a little better.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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