sfarber

Yes, shocked I tell you to find that the Arab street has wholeheartedly embraced Hizbollah as the battle between the well-armed militia/terrorist group within Lebanon and the Israeli state continues into its third week. For its part, Israel has evidently decided against expanding the conflict beyond its current (pretty damned wide) parameters. Hundreds of Lebanese (and dozens of Israelis) have been killed in the fighting, with many times that wounded. It appears that Israel has recognized that it is unlikely to eliminate Hizbollah, with its thousands of rockets and millions (well, over a million, anyway) likely supporters in Lebanon, and...

The Grey Lady gives us this discussion of a request by Israel for accelerated delivery of precision guided munitions for use in its attacks on Lebanon, a request that has been duly honored by the United States. It comes in conjunction with a clear screwing around by Secretary of State Incompetentalleezza Rice, who asks the musical question “what’s the point of shuttle diplomacy now?” One might suggest that the point might be to, oh, stop the killing, which has resulted in hundreds of Lebanese and dozens of Israelis killed, and large parts of Lebanon (and smaller parts of Israel) laid...

It seems that Republican senators who wanted to reorganize the propaganda show trials military tribunals against Guantanamo detainees along lines similar to that already provided by the Uniform Code of Military Justice have received… “mixed signals” from the Bush Administration… which, surprise, surprise, wants Congress instead to rubber stamp the existing kangaroo court military commission structure, which has already been ruled unlawful in the Hamdan case. As Bruce the Veep notes in forwarding this, given that Arlen Spector (Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman) has been as reliable a poodle to the President as Tony Blair has, brazenly looking the other way...

In this case, it appears to be the first time that this President will exercise his veto over an Act of Congress, in this case, a bill which would have expanded the category of stem cell research to which federal funding could attach. It’s an interesting choice for the first veto after 5 1/2 years in office, but then… why bother with the veto when one can just issue signing statements that smack outright of the intent to thumb one’s nose at the people and their elected representatives in Congress by ignoring the jack-jive laws they pass that are found...

The Grey Lady treats us to a discussion of the political plight of Joe Lieberman, who seems… a tad down in the dumps… and in the polls. Frankly, I have considered, and still consider the Connecticut intra-mural urinating contest among Democrats to be hopelessly counterproductive: lots of money, energy and volunteer time is going to multi-millionaire Ned Lamont, who is perfectly capable of paying for this kind of run on his own, but isn’t (paying for things yourself is inconsistent with becoming a multi-millionaire, of course). This money, energy and volunteer time, of course, is not going to House candidates...

The Grey Lady gives us this comprehensive round-up of what seems to be going on in the Israeli part of the Middle East. At the moment, things are “calm”, insofar as the pattern of Hizbollah lobbing rockets at Northern Israel and Israel launching air strikes all over Lebanon with an emphasis on Hizbollah targets continues. Israeli spokesmen indicate that Israel has some kind of “plan” that will take “a few more days”. Since I don’t know what that is, we’ll just have to wait. I’m still trying to figure out what brought all this about. Somebody appears to have miscalculated...

Is starting to look suspiciously like… the old face of the Middle East. In a new development with respect to Iran and its recalcitrance to comply with various demands concerning its nuclear program, Russia and China agreed to get out of the way of a referral of Iran’s non-compliance to the U.N. Security Council. In part, this relates to this weekend’s G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in part, to the fact that the U.N. action will certainly not include any military action, but only the possibility of economic sanctions, or some kind of carrot and stick approach. Which...

As the world is reminded with a horrible series of train explosions in Mumbai, India that left over 170 people dead, that the horrors that can be imposed by terrorism are very real… the Bush Administration re-thinks two of its most prized strategies for the unitary executive’s dealing with its war on terror, specifically, by announcing that all detainees in American custody are now subject to Geneva Convention common article 3 protections (as the Supreme Court intimated in Hamdan), and, even more ominously (and now that most of the easy money has been earned), the Army has announced its terminating...

Well, after the recent Hamdan case appeared to strengthen the doctrine of separation of powers, blasting the Bush Administration for deigning fit to legislate in the area of establishing military tribunals that did not conform to regular military procedure (i.e. courts martial) as the Court found was required by United States ratification of the third Geneva Convention of 1949… we have a lower court, federal district judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, D.C. who upheld the execution of a search warrant upon the offices of accused Congressional criminal William Jefferson, finding, in a rebuff to a bipartisan group of Congressmen including...