The life of a jihadist is paperwork hell:

After years of trying to discipline him, the leaders of al-Qaida’s North African branch sent one final letter to their most difficult employee. In page after scathing page, they described how he didn’t answer his phone when they called, failed to turn in his expense reports, ignored meetings and refused time and again to carry out orders. Most of all, they claimed he had failed to carry out a single spectacular operation, despite the resources at his disposal.

The last straw was when he scanned his butt and hit Reply All.

A recent poll finds that a segment of the electorate thinks that Benghazi! is the Worst Scandal Ever.  Really?  Okay.  As Charlie Pierce finds, that’s not the best part.

One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is. 10% think it’s in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.

I knew the Castro brothers had something to do with it.

Just call this guy “Lucky.”  Or not.

People keep asking Joe Berti if he feels unlucky.

A bomb exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon seconds after Berti finished the race. Two days later, he was in his home state of Texas when he saw a fertilizer plant explode near Waco.

“I was just like, ‘I can’t believe this!’” said Berti, who said he had never witnessed an explosion before. Then he thought: “I just want to get out of here and get away from all these explosions.”

But Berti, as it turns out, is far from unlucky. Instead, he feels fortunate. He left both tragedies unscathed, while members of his running group and his wife — who was closer to the Boston explosion than he was — were also unhurt.

“It’s a miracle,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. “People keep saying, ‘Don’t you feel unlucky?’ and I was actually the opposite — saying not only do I not feel unlucky, but I feel blessed that my wife could be 10 yards from the explosion and not have a scratch.”

I’m glad he’s okay, but it sounds like there’s a cosmic target on his back.

We’ve already had a terrible week with the Boston bombing, the Senate caving in spectacular cravenness to the wingnut lobby, and now death and destruction in Texas from an explosion at a fertilizer plant.  (I give that a couple of hours before there’s a conspiracy theory floated about that.)

Dare I ask what more could go wrong?

Fox and Friends defends President Obama’s comments about California AG.

The president has already apologized.

From Reuters:

Action film star Steven Seagal, who racks up big body counts in his on-screen battles with bad guys, took on a new role on Saturday, training posse volunteers for controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in how to use guns to protect schools in shooting incidents.

Arpaio, who styles himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” enlisted Seagal to train his Maricopa County posse members at a school in Fountain Hills, a suburb northeast of Phoenix, with children used as stand-ins for scared students.

In other news, Joe Pesci will be lecturing at Yale Law School on courtroom procedure.

Via TPM:

Anti-immigrant firebrand and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) says he will make good on a past bet he made to smoke marijuana if Colorado legalized it by referendum. Tancredo, who supported the marijuana reform proposal but said he did not partake in drugs himself, made a bet in a promotional film advocating its passage that he would nonetheless smoke pot if it ended up becoming law. Since it passed, he told Fox News he will uphold his end of the bargain:

“Look, I made a bet with the producer of the film that if Amendment 64 passed ( I did not think it would) that I would smoke pot,” he said through his research and education institute, the Rocky Mountain Foundation. “I will therefore smoke pot under circumstances we both agree are legal under Colorado law. Hey, it’s better than having to do a stupid dance as (Denver) Mayor (Michael) Hancock must perform as a result of losing a bet on the Broncos beating the Ravens.”

Okay, folks, take your best shot.