sfarber

There’s no other way to interpret what the Vice-President means by “serious consequences for Iran” if that nation does not satisfactorily resolve the stand-off over the development of its nuclear program between it and the other nuclear powers (in particular, the United States, Britain and France… and without saying its name… oops, I did… Israel). This seems to me to be part of a sudden concerted campaign as we approach the third anniversary of the Iraq war to quite possibly have “the sequel” against Iran. Certainly, stories designed to gin up public hatred of Iran have emerged, such as the...

A number of interesting events today. We’ll start with the South Dakota Governor signing a bill purporting to ban virtually all abortions in that state that do not imminently threaten the life of the mother. That’s one way to make the courts work. Speaking of the courts, in a case called FAIR v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court, by an 8-0 holding, rejects arguments by law schools that the military can be barred from recruiting on their campuses while said schools (or their students) receive any federal funding, even though the military does not abide by the schools’ policies not to...

For one, you might skin it without actually infecting yourself with anthrax. In a pair of WTF posts , Diana tells us here of the saga of a man who traveled from West Africa, and here, brought goat skins through customs at JFK airport to a warehouse in Brooklyn, so he could make drums. The infected fellow has apparently performed in New York City schools. Needless to say, as one with a child in a New York City school, and someone who lives around a mile from the warehouse that has become infected with anthrax, this story is more than...

The Associated Press is reporting that over 5,000 federal criminal cases (of which it is aware) have been conducted in complete secrecy. While some of these cases do apparently involve terrorism allegations, for the most part, the cases involve drug gangs and plea bargain and other deals given to cooperating witnesses. As the A.P. piece notes, one is hard-pressed to criticize the government’s actions in such cases if one has no idea what they are. The Sixth Amendment’s right to a public trial is not only a protection for the defendant, but for the people themselves, to know that their...

Much as we continue to covet our status as having once been a finalist (for the anomolous “best non-liberal blog at Wampum’s Koufax Awards“), we are up again this year for our series of “Unlawful Combatant Attorney Interviews”. Go over to Wampum and vote… not for best blog, just “best series”… so many better blogs than this one up in every category… we have no chance. Still, the essence of the series is that one little guy with a blog can talk to key players on one of the most compelling stories of the day, and get angles that the...

< And so we continue our survey of the cultural talking dog phenomenon with one of the most popular talking dogs of all time, Underdog, voiced by the late great Wally Cox, and his female friend, Sweet Polly Purebred, pictured in the montage above. Mrs. TD has pointed out to me that the talking dog is an extremely powerful metaphor (and one with literary and cultural antecedents of longstanding.) The basic premise, of course, is that man’s best friend the dog is to be seen, and not heard. The dog is simply not to tell us what it is thinking,...

The Department of Defense has, almost unbelievably, actually complied with an order of a court doing something that the Bush Administration didn’t want to do, in this case, releasing this list of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The government of our democratic and free country has decided, after holding some of these men well over four years, to tell us their names. As many of you know, the Hamdan case is coming before the Supreme Court (discussion with Salim Hamdan’s attorney Neal Katyal is contained in my interview here) which may, hopefully, spell out once and for all the...

More not-so-good news for the President: even a Fox poll shows the ports issue to be a political albatross on the President, with only 17% in favor of the ports deal and an astounding 69% opposed; indeed, even on a Fox poll, Bush’s support among Republicans (the only people who actually like him) dipped below 80%, to 77%… so you know he has some problems. Of course, the hidden undercurrent there: more people (by 44% to 42%) think opposition to the ports is more motivated by politics than legitimate concern for security; of course, 69% of respondents say they oppose...

The Associated Press released video footage showing that, in direct contrast with his own his own later statement that “we couldn’t anticipate the breach of the levees“, the President and Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff were advised of everything that was later going to happen as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The Emperor has no clothes. We have videos of him stripping, in fact, and laughing about being naked. As I’ve said on other occasions: imagine for a moment if this were President Clinton, or Gore, or Kerry. Would we ever hear the end of this? Democrats finally have their mantra...

The President has arrived to as warm a welcome as possible in New Delhi, India; Prime Minister Singh went to the airport himself to greet him. One of the joys of blogging and the internet is the immediate availability of foreign sources; in this case, the Hindustan Times, the sidebar’s entry from India, has extensive coverage on the visit, and notes that one of the key issues is a civilian nuclear power cooperation agreement between the United States and India. Who knew? As India already has nuclear weapons, this is sort of the same order the United States developed nuclear...