It’s a real head scratcher:

PARIS — An escapee from a psychiatric institution slashed a rabbi and his son with a box-cutter on Tuesday, prompting witnesses to tackle and subdue the attacker after a chase through a Paris synagogue, officials said.

The rabbi, who is in his late 40s, was recovering from surgery for a neck injury and his 18-year-old son sustained lesser injuries in the attack north of a touristic shopping area near Paris’ gilded Opera Garnier, according to police and judicial officials and Richard Prasquier, who heads CRIF, France’s largest umbrella organization of Jewish groups.

. . . .

The assailant was of Iranian origin, and an official investigation was underway to determine a possible motive, Prasquier said.

Gendarme!!! Look over here!

Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, said the two victims had been wearing Jewish skullcaps, and the attacker was detained after a chase through the synagogue. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents worldwide, said in a statement that the assailant screamed “Allah-u-Akbar” — or “God is great” — during the attack.

I do believe we have . . . A CLEW!!! Alert Hercule Poirot!

Above: Not Hercule Poirot

Yes, it’s the biggest mystery since that Muslim guy shot up the Jewish community center while screaming his hatred of Israel and Jews. The motive for that attack was labeled a “mystery” by the Los Angeles Times (motto: “Derrrr.”).

I wish the intrepid investigators bonne chance in solving this, truly one of the world’s Greatest Mysteries of recent times.

Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post:

A recent informal poll that one L.A. Times writer conducted of his colleagues showed that almost all planned to exit if the Kochs took control (and that included sportswriters and arts writers).

The writer appears confused about the difference between a bug and a feature.

Go, Kochs! Throw in the editors and you have yourselves a deal.

Just lovely.

Russian authorities contacted the US government with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev not once but “multiple’’ times, including an alert it sent after he was first investigated by FBI agents in Boston, raising new questions about whether the FBI should have paid more attention to the suspected Boston Marathon bomber, US senators briefed on the inves­tigation said Tuesday.

The FBI has previously said it interviewed Tsarnaev in early 2011 after it was initially contacted by the ­Russians. In their review, completed in summer 2011, the bureau found no ­evidence that Tsarnaev was a threat. “The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from” Russia, the agency said last week.

Following a closed briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said he believed that Russia alerted the United States about Tsarnaev in “multiple contacts,” including at least once since October 2011.

So was he on a watch list or not? Reports seem to vary widely.

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As iowahawk says:

The Tsarnaev brothers were state-supported terrorists. The state was Massachusetts. bostonherald.com/news_opinion/l…

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 24, 2013

Wonderful.

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.

State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home.

Lefties will no doubt claim this is a one-off, and that it is silly to attack welfare because one terrorist was sucking up benefits from the state. Wake up and smell the triple mocha non-fat decaf latte, lefties. Go to any criminal courthouse and watch the people streaming in and out. By and large, they are the same people streaming in and out of welfare offices at the first of every month. We are funding a criminal underclass, and Tsarnaev is just one particularly violent example. This is a daily problem.

Meanwhile, we have “jobs Americans won’t do” which serve as a magnet for illegal immigrants to come here and work . . . only to discover that the phony documents they use to get those jobs will get them welfare benefits too — and as long as they make it here, some Republican idiots will eventually agree to let them stay here legally, so they can vote for more of those benefits in perpetuity.

Great country we have here, huh?

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What was that filibuster all about then?

“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash. I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him.”

If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash, they are not legitimate targets for assassination, by drones or policemen. We’re supposed to do this thing called arresting them and bringing them to trial.

From this clip, it sounds like Paul cares only about surveillance. Drone strikes to kill any criminal suspect, however minor, don’t appear to faze him at all.

There are those who thought the idea of the government using drones to smite American citizen criminals in America was tinfoil hat stuff. Weeks later — just weeks! — we have had the Boston bombings, the manhunt for Tsarnaev, and John McCain and Lindsey Graham declaring him an enemy combatant. Do you think McCain or Graham would blink twice before ordering a drone attack on him if they could? And, now that our libertarian hero is giving such a tactic the thumbs up, even for a stick-em-up robbery suspect, who would stand up against them?

Help us, Ted Cruz. You’re our only hope.

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