sfarber

Amidst all our nation’s domestic mirth and merriment, Mrs. TD and I are pleased to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary today (even if, for a short time, there was some doubt about the legal viability of our marriage, given its original situs.) So, let me wish a most happy anniversary to Mrs. TD.

While Will Rogers always said that no citizen was safe while the Congress was in session, any claim to humor in that remark was duly eviscerated when the august body, the United States Senate, duly caved to the President’s demand to “try” poor schmucks that he calls “terrorists” arbitrarily (if at all), detain them forever, and insulate anyone who would abuse them (i.e. himself) from later prosecution, and passed this abomination of a bill, making us, officially, the only nation in the world to legally and officially sanction torture. BTW, there is nothing stopping the application of this “law” (the...

Our buddy and AmStreet head muckity muck Kevin urges us to take a look at his piece summing up the call among people of conscience (i.e. Democrats and Independents) for the immediate release of both so-called “National Intelligence Estimates” pertaining to the Iraq War, so that the President can’t “nuance” his way out of the ultimate conclusion that his boneheaded decision to invade Iraq and his even more boneheaded mismanagement of that invasion made the problem of terrorism worse. Not so hard, is it? And I am reminded of having sat through a legal seminar at work on the subject...

The Grey Lady treats us to this year’s principal GOP winning strategy: arbitrary enforcement of voter identification requirements. On the surface, one recognizes that someone just has to prove who they are for just about everything in our security crazed country (including frequently entry into private office buildings), so why not “prevent fraud” in voting? I agree. Why not? Well… the overwhelming majority of reported incidents of fraud occur with respect to absentee ballots (as the article notes). Absentee ballots, frequently people living abroad, in the military, traveling, etc., are overwhelmingly (at least historically) Republican voters. And yet, the i.d....

We’ve, of course, been harping on the themes that the GOP wiill be relying upon to victory in maintaining control of both houses of Congress around 44, 45 days from now, including (obviously) first and foremost torture and star chambers, with Big Brother surveillance next week… all, you know, to keep us safe. BTW, given the USA intelligence report out that shows that we have made the threat of terrorism far, far worse thanks to our Iraq invasion; according to reports of the National Intelligence Assessment reported upon by the Grey Lady, it appears that AQ and other terrorist threats...

What’s old seems to be new again. Flush from the sudden goodwill from being almost certainly about to be exonerated-by-legislation for his own (and his associates’ and underlings’) war crimes, the President has now moved on to that tried and true Rovian tactic: accuse the Democrats of being the party of higher taxes. No, not even I can believe it either… but that’s the theme and the pose he is taking, and it would seem that this may be the full extent of Republican “domestic policy”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you just have to admire...

The Grey Lady and the WaPo give us their accounts of detainee treatment agreements reached between Senators McCain, Warner and Graham, and the White House. I have a pretty good idea what the bills are about (stripping jurisdiction from federal courts to hear habeas corpus writs, and ostensibly trying to provide the dictatorial tools Cheney wants by Congressional rubber stamping what John Yoo had previously told the President he could do by “unitary executive” fiat)… they are about denying any semblance of a fair trial to terror suspects, they are about wink-winking to torture carried out by the CIA, and...

Let me quote Bill Scher (author of “Wait! Don’t move to Canada!“), who I interviewed, just one post down: As to national security, this is another matter. What we really need to do is lay out our foreign policy principles and what we want to achieve globally. One area is promoting democracy– that is a key liberal goal and principle, to be sure. And George W. Bush SAYS the same thing– HE wants to promote democracy. Ah, but he doesn’t DO it. And we can point to example after example, from condoning a military dictatorship in Pakistan, helping to oust...

Abdullah al-Amiri, the chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial, was removed by the Iraqi government (that we prop up and otherwise control) for suggesting that Saddam “was not a dictator” during the trial. He has been reassigned to hear other cases. You will recall that here in the United States, when judges attempt to administer justice impartially under the law without concern to popular outcry or political interference, our senators (particularly Texas Republicans) prefer to incite violence against them. In Iraq, they (hopefully) will only remove the judge from the case. In the “new democratic Iraq,” the judge is...