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And so, the Obama Administration completes this week of full-about-toward-tyranny, by announcing the intention to resume trials of GTMO detainees by military commissions. As I’ve said recently, I’m more disappointed than surprised; former GTMO prosecutor Darrel Vandeveld, frankly, saw the wind blowing this way in my interview with him, insofar as he made a number of suggested improvements and procedures for the commissions to make them fair (something Col. Vandeveld, responsible for around a third of outstanding commission prosecutions, concluded was impossible under the system as he found it). The devil remains in the details; supposedly, there will be preclusion...

We’ll start with this amazing piece in the Washington Note by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, who takes Dick Cheney to utter task over the former veep’s pronouncements regarding the effectiveness of torture, scooping, perhaps everyone on Earth, with the following: Third–and here comes the blistering fact–when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops “the Cheney method of interrogation and torture”, the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way. My investigations have revealed to me–vividly and clearly–that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made...

You know, I certainly supported the President in his campaign, and I readily admit, I was taking a flyer: Barack Obama was an enigma, and I, just as was the case with almost all of his other college classmates in Columbia’s class of ’83, didn’t know him in college, and quite frankly have learned little if anything of the man since (other than what he wrote in his own memoirs, which, btw, are in an interestingly detached tone). That said, it would really be out-of-bounds for me to say that I’m terribly disappointed by today’s “in your face” to me,...

The Chicago Tribune runs this lengthy feature, prominently devoted to the good work of Candace Gorman, whom we are proud to call our friend.

Happy mothers day, to Mrs. TD, TD Mom, TD Mother in Law, and all the other moms out there.

Happy birthday, belated to TD Niece (now… is it 3 already?), and, not belated, to TD Dad.

Well, they could be remote shangri-las, or perhaps third-world sh*t-holes, depending on one’s perspective, but the Swat Valley and Buner regions of Pakistan, closest points less than two days’ walk from Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi (respectively, political capial and military h.q./ home of nuclear program) of Pakistan, should have the world’s complete and total support to shore them up against Taliban onslaught… but this WaPo report makes it clear that things is very, very bad there. The Pakistani government remains conflicted over whether the cancerous political monster (largely of its own creation and nurturing), the fundamentalist-Sunni Muslim Taliban, are its...

It should come as no surprise that after years of being told that their children were in mortal danger of being killed by terrrrrorists and that brutal torture of likely innocent men was the only way to keep them safe from the scourge of Islamo-fascism… a slight (50-46) majority of Americans polled recently believe that the use of such torture was justified. Naturally, this is given as an explanation of why the Obama Administration will tread lightly on complying with its own obligations at law (and by treaty) to thoroughly investigate official wrongdoing… although politicians will feel free to ignore...

Somehow, your talking dog managed to avoid the storms traveling up the East Coast just long enough to complete the Cox Rhode Race Marathon in Providence, RI in my standard issue time… representing state 12/marathon 23… Regular readers know that on this blog… it’s always about me. Anyway, while many are suffering the agony of either swine-flu or swine-flu like symptoms… I sit in agony as a result of my own actions (including the drive home… through those storms)! Speaking of agony… we’ll talk about agonizing… And we’ll move on to one of my obsessions, GTMO, which, Candace may yet...

Certainly, this occasion purportedly for the workers of the world to celebrate the achievements of the labor movement… may not quite work out that way this year, with riots all over Europe, ostensibly fueled by the financial and economic crisis now gripping the globe. While millions of Americans are feeling the hit here (and indeed, millions have lost their jobs here just in the last few months)… by and large, Americans seem eerily nonchalant about it… just as we seem to be eerily nonchalant about everything else… such as… Well… we can talk about the financial and economic crisis it...