Like a violent storm the US Army sought to squash any signs of expression when a group of graduating black female West Point cadets took a photo with raised fists. Their raised fists a sign of solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

Military insiders have reported the black female cadets have complained to senior officers the racism within the mostly white and male-dominated academy is too much to take. The military would never allow these cadets to speak publicly, however, so it may never be known whether they meant the picture to go viral.

We once again owe the great reporter Seymour Hersh a serious debt for his reporting, in this case for his London Review of Books articles on President Barack Obama's war making, now published as a book called The Killing of Osama bin Laden. Despite the title, three of the four articles are about Syria.

But there is a shortcoming in how Hersh tells history, as in how many reporters do. I've watched Hersh do interviews about the topic on Democracy Now and never once heard him mention the U.S. public. In his book, the public gets one mention: "The proposed American missile attack on Syria never won public support, and Obama turned quickly to the UN and the Russian proposal for dismantling the Syrian chemical warfare complex." Taken in isolation, that sentence suggests what I think is an important causal relationship. Taken in the context of a book that spends many pages offering other explanations for Obama's decision, that one sentence seems to be simply stating two unrelated incidents in chronological order.

Bernie Sanders may have been chivalrous when he told a beleaguered Hillary Clinton, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” But when it comes to actually reading some of Clinton’s confidential exchanges, that’s another matter.

On April 1, 2016 President Barack Obama addressed the closing session of the Nuclear Security Summit and praised "the collective efforts that we've made to reduce the amount of nuclear material that might be accessible to terrorists around the world."

"This is also an opportunity for our nations to remain united and focused on the most active terrorist network at the moment, and that is ISIL," Obama said. Some observers might argue that the US, itself, now represents the world's "most active terrorist network." In doing so, they would merely be echoing the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who, on April 4, 1967, railed against "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."

While Obama hyped the fact that "a majority of the nations here are part of the global coalition against ISIL," he also noted that this same coalition was a major recruiting conduit for ISIS militants. "Just about all of our nations have seen citizens join ISIL in Syria and Iraq," Obama admitted, without offering any thoughts as to why this situation exists.

As a defender for the Columbus Crew SC, Michael Parkhurst likes to make the most out of every opportunity he’s given. Parkhurst was glad one of his opportunities wasn’t taken away from him when the Black and Gold defeated the Houston Dynamo 1-0 April 23 at MAPFRE Stadium.

Parkhurst, Columbus’ captain the last three seasons, was inadvertently given a red card for denying a goal-scoring opportunity in the 86th minute of a 3-2 home win over New York City FC on April 16. In an April 18 match report, the referee cited a case of mistaken identity and said the red card should have been given to Tyson Wahl. Three days after that, Wahl’s red card was also rescinded.

“I don’t like to miss games. That’s for sure,” Parkhurst said after the win over Houston improved the Crew SC to 2-3-2 overall after the first seven matches. “I figured it would get overturned but you never know. Crazy things have happened before.