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And so we come to the end of another trip around the sun, this time making it 59 for me. Barring some kind of unlikely Biblical scale longevity, we’ve been playing the back nine of life for a few holes now, and have reached the strange time in my life where that unavoidable reality seems more comforting than terrifying. Maybe the endless four years of the You-Know-Who “presidency” (with a threat of more to come) will do that. Amazing what the loss of [what was left of] your country’s soul will do to your overall attitude. Meanwhile, stuff is happening!...

I wouldn’t have expected the first GTMO related case taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in over a decade to involve our old friend Abu Zubaydah (a/k/a Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husain) and his quest to break through the state secrets fortress wall in order to get accountability for his egregious torture at the hands of the CIA at a black site in Poland… against the CIA’s contractor psychologists and torture consultants Drs. Mitchell and Jessen, but that is the case argued last week. Andy has more in a comprehensive take on the subject. [To be fair, the Ninth Circuit...

I would be remiss if I did not use this occasion to wish Mrs. TD a happy anniversary. As of today, we have been married for thirty years. I can only say that three decades’ time– literally the majority of my own life– is difficult to contemplate (even if it is the common term of, say, a home mortgage loan.) Since that autumn day in 1991 when we were married, the world, at least as I observe it, is both terrifyingly different, and terrifyingly not different. Certainly, many kith and kin present that day are no longer with us lo...

Strange as it is to believe, I have been writing on this blog for TWENTY YEARS. Somehow, you and I are both still alive! I looked it up, and the traditional gift for this one is china, the modern “theme” is platinum, the gemstone is emerald, the colors are emerald and white and the flower is the daylily. God willing, in just ten days time, Mrs. TD and I will be celebrating our thirtieth wedding anniversary. And so here we are. Well, not all of us. I lost TD Dad about six years ago, for example, and many of you...

So here we are! Several things happening at once. This is all a bit awkward for me today, for several reasons. First are the uncomfortable memories of “my own private 9-11,” which, if you don’t know, involved my going to work at my office on Church Street in lower Manhattan one city block north of the World Trade Center complex to get ready for a trial I had scheduled for that particular Tuesday morning. Thus, I bore witness to events from that vantage point– close enough to see some of the poor souls falling out of high floors of the...

Just wanted to say hi y’all! A little technical problems of the plague year bogged us down for the last, oh four months, but we’re back! Didn’t want to miss… September 11th… the most wonderful time of the year (if you’re Dick Cheney!)

I would be remiss if I allowed another month to go by without mentioning one of life’s milestones here in Stately Dog Manor, specifically, the college graduation (with high honors, no less!) of the Loquacious Pup. Proud Mom and Dad were privileged to have the opportunity to actually attend a physical graduation, conducted a little over a week ago, in two parts to enable social distancing among parents, on the football field of the small-ish liberal arts college that the LP attended. As some of you will recall, the Plague Year began for Familia Talking Dog in Merry Old Spain,...

Earler today, in a tense courtroom in Minneapolis, MN, former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges against him (murder in the second and third degree and manslaughter) for the killing last year of George Floyd. As Mr. Chauvin is white, and as Mr. Floyd was black, and as the killing was captured on video and established that Chauvin’s knee was on or near Floyd’s neck until Floyd passed out and died, one wonders, quite frankly, why the trial took so damned long. The harsh reality is that in the United States it is extremely rare...

With all the good stuff happening, such as over 100 million vaccines (at least the first dose) administered to Americans (with one in eight American adults fully vaccinated), we take a moment to note that the COVID-45 plague has already resulted in the deaths of over 500,000 Americans as well as over 30 million Americans infected according to the Johns Hopkins Univ. World-o-meter. I should add that my fair city commemorated the first COVID-45 death a year ago yesterday. Meaning… we are in year 2… of the plague year. The COVID-45 plague has also resulted in significant economic devastation, including...

There is an interesting question about whether the plague year can be more than twelve months, as clearly, COVID-45 was on our shores by this time a year ago (although I count it from the date in mid-March when most things in New York shut down). But like the reign of terror under now former President Donald J. Trump (“acquitted” for the second time by a complicit Republican senate caucus, although seven Republicans voted to convict him for inciting insurrection), time and space seem more “flexible” than we give them credit for being. IMHO. And so, COVID-45 is seemingly going...