tdog

It seems to be something about this time of year… maybe it’s just a coincidence that May or June seems to bring this sort of thing… to wit, the military is reporting the fifth “apparent suicide” (and sixth overall death) in the ignominious history of GTMO, America’s own gulag, now proudly managed by the Obama Administration (via Candace). Subject was Yemeni hunger striker, age 31, unrepresented until around February or so, and the government was doubtless giving whoever signed on to be his lawyers the runaround to the point where they never met their client… until eventually, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah...

While I often don’t agree with him (!), sometimes Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online has interesting things to say, and this piece on the Obama Administration’s brief opposing the grant of review in the Uighurs’ case is an excellent example. McCarthy does what Dick Cheney doesn’t, and lauds the Obama Administration for adopting Dick Cheney’s policies, in this case, the argument that despite three major Supreme Court cases and nearly 900 years of jurisprudence to the contrary, habeas corpus is really a dead-letter that can be thwarted by simple governmental recalcitrance. Specifically, the premise is that the 17 Uighurs...

That phrase pretty much sums up my feelings towards the not particularly surprising nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the nation’s next (and first Latin American) Supreme Court Justice. Not exciting– but certainly competent, and nothing to be the least bit disappointed in. If confirmed, which is all but a certainty, she will become the sixth Catholic on the High Court (joining Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito) and the eighth non-Protestant (joining Breyer and Ginsberg) as President Obama continues the recent trend to eliminate all Protestants on the High Court, so that we have a Supreme Court that...

Perverse as it sounds, it should probably come as a relief to the Obama Administration that it has a conventional nuclear weapons problem with North Korea, a country with a return address where the people who live at it are probably not suicidal psychopaths… and hence, perversely, it should be less worried about today’s nuclear weapons test by North Korea. Have you lost your mind, TD? My reflex is just to say “don’t answer that!” Lookit: we are well aware that North Korea has nuclear weapons: it has already conducted a successful test. OK… now we really, really know? Sorry…...

I have little to add to Andy’s comments about the President’s speech on national security and the future of GTMO. Among alternatives discussed were “preventive detention” [without trial of course]; GTMO already is “preventive detention” without adjudication (an “alternative” as suggested by the President), and it is the best recruiting tool al Qaeda ever have. The commissions, which he proposes to restart, are, of course, very problematic as well. But the tone of the President’s speech, including reiterating the commitment to close GTMO, and the atmospherics of the National Archives… were pretty good. What else can I say (other than...

I have to say I have nothing but admiration for the President’s choice of a Republican, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China. Just as he brought in his chief Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, now he brings Huntsman, the national campaign manager of his Republican opponent Sen. John McCain, to serve in just about the most important diplomatic post I can think of, as China is not merely (1) the most populous nation on Earth with (2) the fastest growing economy, but it also (3) props up our economy by continuing to buy up...

And so, the Obama Administration completes this week of full-about-toward-tyranny, by announcing the intention to resume trials of GTMO detainees by military commissions. As I’ve said recently, I’m more disappointed than surprised; former GTMO prosecutor Darrel Vandeveld, frankly, saw the wind blowing this way in my interview with him, insofar as he made a number of suggested improvements and procedures for the commissions to make them fair (something Col. Vandeveld, responsible for around a third of outstanding commission prosecutions, concluded was impossible under the system as he found it). The devil remains in the details; supposedly, there will be preclusion...

We’ll start with this amazing piece in the Washington Note by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, who takes Dick Cheney to utter task over the former veep’s pronouncements regarding the effectiveness of torture, scooping, perhaps everyone on Earth, with the following: Third–and here comes the blistering fact–when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops “the Cheney method of interrogation and torture”, the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way. My investigations have revealed to me–vividly and clearly–that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made...

You know, I certainly supported the President in his campaign, and I readily admit, I was taking a flyer: Barack Obama was an enigma, and I, just as was the case with almost all of his other college classmates in Columbia’s class of ’83, didn’t know him in college, and quite frankly have learned little if anything of the man since (other than what he wrote in his own memoirs, which, btw, are in an interestingly detached tone). That said, it would really be out-of-bounds for me to say that I’m terribly disappointed by today’s “in your face” to me,...

The Chicago Tribune runs this lengthy feature, prominently devoted to the good work of Candace Gorman, whom we are proud to call our friend.