sfarber

The New York Times treats us to this lengthy article documenting just how well numerous Bush Administration officials have done since leaving government for the private sector to work on homeland security matters. While, for example, the famous success of St. Rudy of Giuliani in cashing in on the growth-industry-that-is-paranoia with Giuliani Partners may be so great that it is sufficient to keep him out of serious consideration for national office, other moves include former Deputy Homeland Security Secretary (and Clinton Impeachment operative) Asa Hutchinson to the Venable law firm, Tom Ridge to Savi Technology’s board (which will be conveniently...

In response to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request, the Pentagon released over 1,000 pages of documents detailing abuses of prisoners detained by American forces in Iraq, including at least two major military reports on abuse. The overall conclusion of the reports (and other documents produced) is that while numerous… questionable… actions were taken against prisoners (including “sleep deprivation and playing loud music and limiting detainees to bread and water for extended periods up to 17 days and stripping at least one detainee naked”), such actions were, in the end, deemed “wrong… but not illegal.” For her part, commenting...

That island would be Cuba, specifically the United States’ 40-square mile tropical enclave (and naval air station) at Guantanamo Bay, and those voted off by SecDef Rumsfeld are reporters from the Miami Herald, L.A. Times and Charlotte Observer (the latter of whom thought he could report on the base commander’s briefing in response to the recent detainee suicides.) Despite my own paltry efforts to draw some attention to the Gitmo situation which have gone, by and large, unheeded (this is, after all, a hobby), it seems that the only things that get play down there are either a Supreme Court...

The Newsrack blog gives us a snippet of an interview with Major Thomas Fleener, the military attorney thrust on Gitmo Commission defendant Al-Bahlul who’d prefer to represent himself; Major Fleener (rightly) argues that the Gitmo military commissions amount to little more than show trials. The Bush Administration, rather than try to formulate anything approaching, oh, fairness in the military commission process, says it will wait for the Supreme Court to tell it what to do. (I guess that’s just professional courtesy to a body without whom there might not be a Bush Administration, one supposes.) Scroll down a bit for...

Once in a while, we must take a moment away from the weight of the world, and just enjoy a moment. Such a moment is now. The Loquacious Pup has lost her first tooth (naturally, a canine; they’re all canines!) I know in the good old days, the Tooth Fairy would be notified of these things by telephone (or perhaps by telepathy), but in this case, she’ll (we think the TF is a she, though we can never be sure) be notified by this blog’s RSS feed. Or something.

Karl Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin announced that he, Rove and the White House have been advised by the office of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that it is unlikely that Karl Rove will be indicted as part of the Valerie Plame leak probe. Rove has made innumerable appearances before the Grand Jury in last minute efforts to save his own (and, therefore, the President’s) ass… and apparently these efforts have been successful. It is unclear what, of course, Rove’s legal team has successfully accomplished (other than the only thing that matters, of course, and the only thing that should matter to...

This was inevitable. Two Saudis and one Yemeni, using bedsheets and clothing, managed to hang themselves at Guantanamo Bay, and are the first detainee deaths at that facility. Held there over four and a half years, without charges, without access to the outside world save only occasional highly restricted visits with attorneys (for those with attorneys)… suicides were inevitable. While prior attempts by detainees to kill themselves via a hunger strike were thwarted using force-feeding in a restraining chair (described in detail in my interview with Dr. David Nicholl here), amongst other methods, and heretofore perpetual surveillance permitted intervention at...

Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha has announced his intention to run for the position of House Majority Leader, should the unthinkable happen, and the Democrats take back the House. I guess from where I sit, this looks like a great move; he’d leapfrog over current House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, a guy who makes Joe Lieberman look like the Daily Kos in terms of his giving deference (and succor) to the Bush Administration. Plus, Murtha actually stands for something with respect to the Iraq War, to wit, ending it, and won’t do the usual Democratic two-step: when they talk about something...

Well, well… Republican efforts (supported by some Democrats) for outright repeal of the nation’s fairest and most efficient tax, that on estates that doesn’t really kick in until estates reach around $2,000,000, failed to overcome a “cloture” (or “filibuster”) vote in the senate. In part, this issue is a result of a failure of Democratic discipline (see “Baucus, Max”) in two ways. The first is holding its members in line against any asinine deficit-expanding repeals, until we have some semblance of overall budget sanity, there’s no call for making things yet worse. Second, the proponents of repeal have had the...