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We’ll start with our friend Barb and this artice discussing the “principled” (as in “principal plus interest”) opposition of the American Medical Association to the “public option” being discussed with regard to healh care overhaul. Barb notes that the AMA, which acts not in the overall interest of physicians (most physicians, for example, are no longer even members), but of the economic interests of some stereotype of physicians; like the Chamber of Commerce, AMA is a classic special interest. Barb notes that the AMA has been opposing anything approaching “socialized medicine” since the Truman Administration (though I wrote to her...

Amidst talk that the [chicken-sh*t] Obama Administration [catering to a chicken sh*t morally bankrupt nation, that kidnaps men, tortures them, holds them for years in a dungeon, and then, when its government has long given up trying to prove these men did anything wrong or are any kind of a threat, instead resorts to crass demonization, fights off, ignores and then appeals a court order granting a habeas corpus writ directing their supervised release within the United States] would transfer the GTMO Chinese national Uighurs to the reliable American vassal independent Pacific island nation of Palau, as Andy tells is...

Glenn Greenwald continues to kick ass as he brings truth to power. This Salon piece documenting “liberal” news oulets, the N.Y. Times and National Palestine Radio (“NPR”), and their specific refusal to call torture torture, no matter how obvious that what they are describing (“intensive interrogation” [that occasionally results in death]) is torture, just hits it out of the park. The specific context is peculiarly alarming: an Obama Administration proposal to try to streamline guilty pleas leading to the death penalty. Just… cause for… concern? Look folks… I don’t like Khalid Sheik Mohammad any more than you do (and unlike...

E.J. Dionne of WaPo tells us in a column called “Rush and Newt are Winning” what regular readers here know to be true a moral certainty, though of course, it is squarely at odds with “conventional wisdom.” That is, of course, that the military-industrial-corporate-media-entertainment-complex does not suffer from left-wing bias at all. In point of fact, and as Mr. Dionne tells us in his column, the media is skewed right. This explains why psychotically reactionary maniac outliers like Gingrich and Limbaugh are depicted as legitimate harbingers of mainstream opinion, and why President Obama, who Dionne rightly notes is actually pretty...

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...