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If you had told me two years ago that my college classmate, then Sen. Barack Obama would find himself the President of the United States by 2009, assuming that I didn’t think you were insane, I would probably have just laughed my a** off, and left it at that. But… if you would have told me one year ago that President Barack Obama (having sewed up the Dem. nomination by then, his ascendancy to the Presidency became substantially more likely) would not only block so much as investigation of the misdeeds of his predecessor and his minions, but that Obama...

Charles Gittings is the progenitor of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, a web-site compiling “torture memos” and other evidence of governmental criminality during the so-called “War on Terror,” as well as court papers, amicus briefs and other relevant documents. On July 2, 2009, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Gittings by e-mail exchange. The Talking Dog: Where were you on 9-11? Charles Gittings: I was at the MacArthur BART Station in Oakland, California, waiting for the train to my job in Hayward. I was standing by myself towards the end of the platform reflecting on the anniversary...

It seemed like it was going on the length of “the Al Franken decade”… but the Minnesota Senate race is finally over, and soon-to-be Senator Al Franken is absolutely delighted with his win in the Minnesota Supreme Court of the never-ending election contest. Best of luck to Sen. Franken, perhaps the only “celebrity I have met while blogging,” whose quip when he began his long campaign was that he was the only New York Jew in the Minnesota Senate race who grew up in Minnesota! This event gives the Democrats the (we’re told) somehow magical total of 60 (counting Specter...

Well, disturbing trends are picked up by the ever-astute Glenn Greenwald, in this Salon piece in which Glenn observes the Obama Administration’s public thought balloons on issuing executive orders pertaining to absolute tyranny “preventive detention” of people who were egregiously tortured “too dangerous to release but who can’t be tried.” WaPo reports on the same subject(h/t to Michael L.) Well, you know my opinion on the subject… an opinion joined by the overwhelming majority of Americans polled, who are outraged at the premise of “prolonged detention” absent due process of law. Glenn also notes the Obama Administration’s obsession with secrecy...

So many alarming trends at once reflected in this story, of a premature infant born in Ontario to Canadian parents, transferred to the only nearby neo-natal unit available, that across the border in Buffalo, NY. Obviously, Canada should have enough capacity to treat the medical needs of its own citizenry, and this will doubtless be hailed by some as a demonstration of the inferiority of all forms of socialized medicine. Of course, even here in “every man, woman and infant for himself land,” it is still possible to occasionally encounter times when certain treatments are unavailable… All troubling enough. But...

Ed McMahon died earlier in the week well into his 80’s; he had a helluva life, as the tandem member of perhaps the perfect dual straight man opposite Carson’s straight man, and… all the other stuff. But I just don’t remember a day like this, where Farrah Fawcett died well before her time at only 62 after a struggle with cancer… but like a bolt from the blue, actor Jeff Goldblum fell from a cliff in New Zealand to his death at only 56, and the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, died of some sort of cardiac arrest at...

In a Grey Lady op-ed by Stuart Beck, Palau’s UN rep, he debunks the right-wing meme that alleges that Palau will be taking a multi-million dollar ($200M) bribe to accept Uighur GTMO detainees. Mr. Beck insists its only relocation and housing costs and so forth of under $100K each. No matter what it is, the broader point is the same: no matter what the problem, whether it’s innocent men that our nation kidnapped and abused, or global warming, or drilling in the Arctic, or paying for our own government services by raising taxes, somehow we Americans are uniquely above hard...

The most exciting political development in a number of years (other than some guy named Obama, of course) is the inconceivable-ten-days-ago massive popular uprising in Iran, for which I can only tell you to keep checking in with Al Giordano, who gives us clear-headed analysis like this, or this, or this, that is just second to none. In a world of information overload, I’d just go right to these and cut through the media morass, as the corporate media continues to cower before the mighty power of the Iranian regime… even as the Iranian people courageously defy it! Who knows...

Dr. Ewart Brown, premier of the local government in Bermuda, has shown immense courage (more courage than the entire United States, btw) in accepting the entry of four completely innocent and found so by our courts former Uighur GTMO detainees… and as a result, the wahoo reactionary political elements in Bermuda are calling for a no-confidence vote (h/t Candace). Brown, and the Bermuda government, not to be confused with Gordon Brown and the UK government, who we would have thought had tacitly approved this in the first place but whose immediate reaction was to harumph about it, deserve our support...

What in God’s name is going in Iran? Keep your eyes on the prize, and, as is almost always the case where political legardemain appears to be going on in front of us, consult Al Giordano’s The Field, who tells us not to be so concerned about whether or not there was “electoral fraud” in Iran [hint: what matters is whether Iranians writ large feel the whole, rigged game of their system is entirely illegitimate, and what they will do about it… which right now, appears to be massive protests amidst government crackdowns, lockdowns and arrests] and Al also tells...