sfarber

We give you this WaPo article discussing the “debate” going on in Congress and other policy circles as to whether to limit or reduce benefits to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Note, btw, that many of the cries for help come from older veterans from the Vietnam era; the real discussion is prospective… shall we screw veterans from the Iraq and Afghan campaigns ahead of time, as they will make their claims for benefits in years to come… There are only two answers, since I’m reasonably sure the third, keeping things the same, is probably the least likely. The...

Happy Boxing Day, and welcome to the official national secular celebration of the day of birth of the Lord and Savior (and The One True God TM). (Oh… it’s also been one year since that tsunami, but it’s not as if that happened in your neighborhood…) As part of your ongoing present, we give you this WaPo article discussing the co-option of street art (which we used to call “graffiti”) by good old corporate America to sell their wares. You see, today’s target demographic, the young, edgy urban male is too busy playing Grand Theft Auto to do his fair...

First of all, let me wish everyone a Merry Jesus’ Birthday. Then, let me tell you the great news: Sec Def Donald Rumsfeld has concluded that Osama bin Laden is no longer in control of Al Qaeda. Amidst all the hoopla over the fact that our Administration is using its “war-time” powers to implement what some might construe as… authoritarian measures… it seems that we won the war while no one was looking. The issue with OBL was either capturing him, or failing that, at least ending his control of A.Q. and sufficiently disrupting his and its operations so that...

According to reports from the Grey Lady (God knows how long they’ve sat on them), the surveillance of phone calls and e-mails and internet traffic by the Bush Administration was far more extensive than previously revealed. It included huge numbers of (surprise, surprise) domestic telephone calls, and vast data mining of who knows what (because, of course, releasing any aspect of this would be precluded in the name of “national security,” which means, of course, that no one other than a high official of the nation is entitled to any security from an abusive government (if it happens to be...

After a third day without subways or buses, amidst the threat of incarceration of its leader, Roger “Rosa Parks” Toussaint, the Transit Workers Union agreed to return to work and continue to negotiate a contract, ending the three day walk out. Timed as it was to hurt the City, during Christmas week, and implemented out of panic probably because union officials feared the most militant factions of their own union rather than because of the perceived need for barganing advantage, this strike will go down as one of the great pointless endeavors in labor-management history, though each worker is out...

The City’s transit strike entered day II; a local judge has summoned Transit Workers’ Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint to court tomorrow, to face possible contempt and jail. At this point, the strike may be taking on the aspect of mutual assured destruction: yes, it inflicts heavy pain on a city of 8 million people; but it may well kill, or at least, permanently damage, the union. Coming as it does like clockwork in an odd year (and in the penultimate week of that year), it joins 9-11 in ’01 and the blackout in ’03 as just-another-event here in...

The saga of lone-U.S.-citizen-to-be-still-held-as-an-unlawful-combatant Jose Padilla took another turn as the same Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that held “Constitution? WHAT Constitution?” last September in overturning a lower court’s grant of habeas corpus has now rebuked the Bush Administration for its brazen attempt to evade Supreme Court review by transferring Padilla out of military custody. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision by now spurned Supreme Court hopeful Michael Luttig noted the appearance of lawlessness, specifically, that the sudden transfer clearly designed to avoid Supreme Court review would make it look like Padilla had been arrested and held…...

“It” is a strike by over 30,000 transit workers at the nation’s (by far) largest public transit system, forcing millions of people (such as m’self) to find alternative means of getting to work (such as walking, or in my case, “limp-jogging.”) Your talking dog won’t pretend he has any sympathy for the strikers in this case. Had they elected to strike last Friday, when the deal they were offered still sucked… then I might sympathize. But they hung tough, and get offered a better deal than any other major municipal union here got… and then called it an insult and...

The world news is too depressing; I am really horrified hearing about that sea-plane crashing in Miami; I’m annoyed by the President’s arrogance at stomping on what we used to think were our constitutional r ights, and I’m perturbed at the possible disruptions to be caused by a New York City transit strike. So instead… something completely different… a shameless self-promotion… You are getting very sleepy, sleepy… you will go over to the Koufax Awards at Wampum and nominate this blog for “best series” (that would be “the talking dog”) for our series, “the unlawful combatant interviews” (of attorneys Dratel...

The President testily defended the practice (revealed by a New York Times story that the Times sat on for over a year to ensure the reelection of the Imperium) that our Government, via its NSA (formerly headed by Incompetetentallezza Rice and now by Stephen “See No Evil, etc.” Hadley) is routinely spying on American citizens in contravention of what we all believed to be the American constitution and laws. Given the ongoing saga of Jose Padilla, our… controversial… practices at Guantanimo Bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and the various ghost CIA operations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East… our massive...