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It seems (as if this is a surprise, to anyone) that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, now holed up in the cozy Ecuadorean embassy in London, was designated “an enemy of the state” by American military officials (according to classified documents heretofore leaked to… Wikileaks.) This, of course, means that, without charge [Assange has never been charged by the United States with anything, though he has expressed fear that if he were extradited to Sweden on suspicion of sexual assault, he would be handed over the United States for “disappearing” (as an Australian national Assange might be eligible for Guantanamo Bay...

We start with the question posed by Peter Kirsanow in National Review Online, noting, among other things, unemployment figures, economic trends and polling on such questions as “is the country on the right track?” and “are you better off now than four years ago?” etc… and asks… “Why isn’t Romney ahead by ten points?” Possibly because Romney doesn’t know why you can’t roll down windows on an airplane. [That, and he wants to get those gosh darned snakes off his dang nabbed plane. Man, I could use a milkshake right about now.] Or maybe because in Romney’s world, he believes...

For the third consecutive try, I failed to reach the 26.22 mile marathon standard in a 6-hour race at yesterday’s Staten Island Six Hour (somewhat ironic, as I usually, albeit not always, complete marathons in well under six hours). Anyway, in my first try at a six hour race in 2010, I intentionally ended my day slightly early, knowing that my fall season would consist of two other marathons and a 50-miler that year. No such excuse this year, but my winter medical maladies have evidently resulted in some weight gain which I haven’t been able to shake; I went...

I began blogging at this domain on 18 September 2001… eleven years ago today. More on that below. First, it seems a federal Appeals Court judge here got the memo on the NDAA, and noted that when Congress and the President say we’re a de jure dictatorship, by Jove, we’re a de jure dictatorship, and if the Government feels like it, it can lock you up without recourse to, you know, law. This, of course, has been the law of the land for over eight years, ever since the Supreme Court refused to spring Jose Padilla. And hence, perversely, the...

And so we come to “that day”– like “that day” eleven years ago here in The City [TM], a Tuesday, with weather almost as crystal clear. I don’t know what to say any more. Like that day, this morning, I will make my way to work, more or less 100 meters or so from the World Trade Center site. But unlike that day, my assumptions about the nature of the nation I live in are wholly different. Then, there were expectations of Constitutional limits to what our government could do to us. We had expectations of a more or less...

We’ll start this Sunday with this happy sorta op-ed by Nick Kristoff in the Grey Lady on… wait for it… organic dairy farming. Yup: good food makes us happier not to mention, the cows are happier. I say this all the time: our grandparents and great grandparents had many more stresses in their lives than we do– but crappy, health-destroying pseudo-food produced in the most heinous industrial conditions and traveling thousands of miles to get to them wasn’t one of them. Exhibit A as to why we spend one in six dollars of our GDP on “health care” (we almost...

We give you an encore link to our friends at The Onion, for their hilarious parody of the President’s convention speech [“Obama: Help us destroy Jesus and start a new age of liberal darkness”] (more because it’s funny not so much because of the send-up of “the culture wars,” but because of the implied proposition that Barack Obama actually feels that strongly about anything besides his own prospects for that corner office at Goldman or Morgan.)

Our friends at The Onion nail it as usual, and tell us about Bill Clinton’s rather demonstrative speech, Michelle Obama’s thoughts on her role in the campaign, Joe Biden’s long road to Charlotte, a candid shot of a delegate, a discussion of DNC programming, a profile of keynote speaker Julian “Not Fidel” Castro, and, of course, news from the Romney/Ryan camp. Finally, “America’s Finest News Source” laments that this year’s DNC just lacks the delusional magic that marked the ’08 convention. We are not worthy. Anecdotally, there are still millions of people paying attention to this crap… for real. Good...

Item: Pakistani authorities arrest an eleven year old girl for the “blasphemy” of burning the pages of a Koran. Seems that the girl was not only a Christian, but also had Downs syndrome; the “blasphemy” thing sparks controversy Pakistan-way, some politicians calling for its repeal have been gunned down. This sort of thing makes us look at how children are treated in the United States, where we see children arrested for, inter alia, spraying perfume on themselves, burping, doodling or throwing paper airplanes. Item: George Will tells us “why doom hasn’t materialized.” You have to hand it to George Will:...

Here’s the thing: Barack Obama may be my classmate, and nominally the candidate of the party in which I’m (nominally) registered, but I don’t see how any self-respecting progressive (or for that matter, human being) can support a President– ANY President– who holds meetings every Tuesday to decide which human beings the United States government should murder. Sorry. So… imagine my disappointment when the possibility of voting for the (not so paradoxically) more liberal Mitt Romney evaporated in a heartbeat today, as old Thurston Howell III Romney (Willard to his friends) picked Paul Ryan for his running mate, not a...