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Obama Fires Top General Without Even a Phone Call Daniel Halper January 25, 2013 10:26 AM President Barack Obama fired General James Mattis, the head of Central Command, without even calling the general to let him know he was being replaced. "I am told that General Mattis was travelling and in a meeting when an aide passed him a note telling him that the Pentagon had announced his replacement as head of Central Command. It was news to him -- he hadn't received a phone call or a heads-up from anyone at the Pentagon or the White House," Thomas E....

Republican precinct committee member Michael Law, also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Steven K. Ricks personally presented him with a binder of instructions on identifying eligible Republican voters - a packet that included ward lists of church members, addresses, phone numbers and voting histories. "Every single name on the list was a member of the Mormon church," Law said. "He told us not to use the word 'list.' But he gave us a ward list to begin with." The packet showed members of a "Republican Election Committee" created by Ricks how to help...

Here is the Washington Post's Tom Ricks talking about what lies ahead for Iraq in 2009. Ricks has written a book on Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq called, "The Gamble." He appeared on Meet the Press today. While I would disagree with Ricks on much of what he says about former Pres. George W. Bush, I think much of what he says about what lies ahead in Iraq is true. Ricks says President Obama is going to face a decision towards the end of 2009 on whether he will do what his followers want him to do regarding troop withdrawals,...

The attentive reader of ''Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq'' will quickly run out of yellow ink highlighting all the misjudgments and missteps that, according to the book, have characterized the U.S. invasion and occupation. The book is a haunting catalog of prescient warnings against invading, inaccurate predictions by Bush administration officials and a few generals, and chronic mistakes in battling an unanticipated insurgency. Thomas E. Ricks could have filled 300 pages simply by compiling lists of examples. That, however, would not have made for the highly readable and disturbing book he has written. ''Fiasco'' is enlivened by on-the-record,...

When it comes to media bias, I'm a hard guy to surprise. That the Washington Post often sees the world in topsy-turvy terms, I take as a given. Nevertheless, the exchange between Howard Kurtz and Post reporter Tom Ricks, on yesterday's Reliable Sources, leaves me speechless: Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other? THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian...

... Ricks approaches Dylan's work with the meticulousness of a scholar-editor and the energy of a teenage fan. On the wall of his BU office, among black-and-white photographs of 20th-century literary luminaries like T.S. Eliot and Robert Lowell, are a framed poster from an early-'60s Dylan concert and an autographed color glossy of Dylan onstage, circa 1975. On the floor of his Cambridge (Mass.) dining room, and in the cupboards of a nearby front room, are stacks of CD jewel cases containing about 1,700 Dylan bootlegs and studio outtakes -- "my Dylan," Ricks calls them. A friend has indexed much...