tdog

The legal denizens of the Democratic National Committee have rendered public their legal advice to the Rules Committee, set to meet on Saturday to finalize the seating arrangements at the Democratic Convention in Denver in August for Michigan and Florida; their advice, unsurprisingly, is to seat half the delegations, and in roughly the proportions won by the respective candidates in their respective beauty contests. While the Clinton campaign may cry foul (and continue their candidate’s ongoing efforts to despoil Democratic chances in November so that the Clintons can assume their rightful restoration in ’12), this is the penalty actually called...

Thus sayeth SecDef Robert Gates with respect to America’s excellent hospitality facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because as he sees it, in the case of 60 or 70 people who have been arbitrarily held for the last six and a half years, their home countries either won’t take them, or worse, might actually not arbitrarily jail them themselves, and they might end up like, you know, that guy who was released and like became a suicide bomber and sh*t; Andy has more on that particular bit of Pentagon propaganda. [Gates and Joint Chiefs Chair Adm. Mullen also noted many of...

From Al Giordano, our newest side-bar denizen, we give you this story of a flood of Biblical proportions… well, a political earthquake of 40 delegates and/or super-delegates (epicentered on California Congressman Cardoza) now committed to back Clinton will soon be announcing their support of Obama. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but right now… that’s probably how you bet. I noted that after Obama held serve on North Carolina/Indiana night, the last big distribution of pledged delegates in primary season, the super-delegates would start breaking for Obama. And indeed they have; right now, 23 May 2008 at around 2100 EDT,...

Is that super-secret NSA program we’re not supposed to know about a government database of around 8,000,000 names and counting of who to round up in the event of martial law? Emptywheel and Digby tell us more about “Main Core”… an absurd name for an absurd program, but then, who knows? Sometimes, the issue isn’t whether you’re paranoid… but whether you’re paranoid… enough.

The Grey Lady tells us of yet another report from the Justice Dept. Inspector General, concerning extensive “disagreements” between the FBI and the CIA concerning the latter’s blatantly illegal, unAmerican, morally reprehensible, so-bad-they-helped-al-Qaeda-recruit terrorists, counterproductive and absolutely evil troublesome practices with respect to “harsh” interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Among the revelations include assisting Chinese interrogators in tormenting Uighur prisoners (prisoners later found to constitute absolutely no threat to this country, and indeed, some of which prisoners we found new homes for in Albania) and a female detainee bending back a detainee’s thumb and grabbing his testicles....

Being a member of the Kennedy family has always seemed to simultaneously wed political triumph with personal tragedy; today, the tragedy part seems to be back, with the announcement that Sen. Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy (D-MA), the last survivor of his brothers, was diagnosed with a likely terminal form of brain cancer following his recent seizure. We wish the best to Sen. Kennedy and his family, and regardless of how one regards the political merits of his career or the mistakes he may have made in the course of his life, he has served the nation honorably for decades, and...

No, not by me. While this blog prides itself on its original interviews, there is still one blog that proves it can do it better, no matter what it might be. It truly is… the best blog(TM). To the great Fafblog (now proudly restored to our sidebar), we simply say, “we are not worthy.” From Fafnir’s interview with Hillary Clinton: FB: Now, back when your husband was president he cut nine million poor women and children off welfare. But now you’re the candidate of women and poor people and poor workin women. So did you approve of what your husband...

Could it be… Hillary Clinton, succumbing to the inevitable after her big win in West Virginia is almost immediately overshadowed by John Edwards’s long overdue endorsement of Barack Obama? No… the world’s no. 1 ranked tennis player Justine Henin of Belgium announced her retirement from the sport, the first woman to do so while holding the top rank. As to Senator Clinton’s ongoing efforts…

It seems fitting that Hillary Clinton will win West Virginia’s Democratic primary. West Virginia is a state whose major industry is extractive and destructive, to wit, coal mining and these days, often by strip mining. So, in its tradition, Hillary proceeded by simply discarding the Black and educated “overburden” of the Democratic party and going right for those valuable ores and nuggets: older, less educated, hard-working White Americans. Every time I think of that statement, I immediately think of the telegram sent to the Governor in Blazing Saddles: We, the White, God-fearing citizens of Rock Ridge wish to express our...

It seems that Missouri wants to live up to its state nickname, by proposing to pass a requirement that prospective voters not merely show identification, but actual proof of citizenship not only to vote, but to register to vote. Obviously, much publicity has surrounded the Supreme Court’s recent upholding of Indiana’s stringent photo identification law for voters, a rule which excluded a dozen nuns from voting there, but the war-to-make-sure-that-the-majority-will-never-prevails continues. The beauty of the current initiative in Missouri is that, unlike the usual photo-i.d. initiatives that seem almost designed to favor “hard working WHITE Americans” (thanks for the expression...