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The Supreme Court granted certiorari review in the case of Ali al-Marri, after Padilla, the second most important case of our lives. Why? Mr. al-Marri, you will recall from our interview with his attorney Jonathan Hafetz, was a legal resident studying at Bradley University in Peoria, IL, when, just like Padilla, was already in the criminal justice system when he was magically declared “an enemy combatant” and held in camera in a military brig in South Carolina, denied any semblance of legal or human rights, and, under every known legal definition of the word, tortured, whether or not a rack...

With only 47 months to go until the November 2012 election, Barack Obama is kicking ass in the polls. Having not elected to waste his precious bodily fluids political capital to help Jim Martin in his quixotic quest to defeat the all powerful Saxby Chambliss in the Georgia Senate race, he instead is scouring an old rolodex he found while touring the White House recently to find members of the Clinton Administration that he hasn’t already appointed. Let me make this clear, folks: Barack is a conventional politician who happens to have had a Black father (a rather kickass Black...

And so this long neglected segment makes its triumphant return with a look at a different kind of talking dog (specifically, the conceit that different species of animals can talk to each other, but not to people), that would be Disney’s latest computer-animated blockbuster, “Bolt,” which Mrs. TD, Loquacious Pup and I saw as family fare. [While I won’t totally spoil it, I may say too much for those who are planning to see it, so… be advised!] Mrs. TD provided me with a spot-on analysis of this film that reflects a level of deep-thinking so subtle that the film-makers...

My heart goes out to the people of Mumbai, India, who have endured days of an ongoing and vicious terror attack that has already killed over 100 and wounded hundreds and hundreds, and does not appear to be over. And as if the attackers wanted us to know they had some Islamist tie-in, they managed to find and attack some of the only 30,000 or so Jews in a country of over 1.3 billion people (at least five of the dead were Israeli citizens, murdered at a Jewish community center during a raid by Indian commandos), and the attack seemed...

The Grey Lady issues a lead editorial calling for the United States Supreme Court to take review of the Ali Al Marri case; Mr. Al Marri, you will recall from, inter alia, our interview with his attorney Jonathan Hafetz, was a lawful resident of the United States who was picked up at his home in Peoria on criminal charges, and like Jose Padilla, magically declared an “enemy combatant” and whisked off the very same brig in Charleston, SC where Padilla languished. As noted in our interview with Jonathan Hafetz, the issues and stakes are the same: it matters not under...

That would be, perhaps, Daniel Gross writing at Slate, that it is not time to party like it’s 1929, because it isn’t 1929. Many of the institutions that exist now (as a result of the Great Depression), such as FDIC and Social Security, serve as ultimate economic shock absorbers, and further, unlike the 30’s, when in one year alone over 4,000 banks failed, things are bad, but not like that. (Mr. Gross fails to mention the perennial economic demand machine known as “the military industrial complex,” so I will, though of course, spending on the refurbishment of the bridge of...

In an unexpected (to me, anyway) ruling, Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ordered the release of 5 (out of 6 litigating) Bosnian/Algerian detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay, granting their habeas corpus petitions. Judge Leon is actually the second judge to order detainees released. Judge Ricardo Urbina previously granted an ostensibly uncontested petition by a group of Chinese nationals who the government conceded were “not enemy combatants,” just that they had no rights anyway, and the government got a stay from an appellate court. [The plight of the Uighurs is discussed in my interview...

No, not… her. When it comes to the real choices, and not those touted by Team Clinton to keep itself relevant and pushed by the media trying to keep hopping in a naturally slow post-election news month, the real announcements from Team Obama are made in a grown-up, non-dysfunctional, and non-drama-queen way. And so it is with the Secretary of Health and Human Services designate, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Not dissimilar to his earlier choice of former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder to serve as the next United States Attorney General. No need for press recriminations… No need...

Thus sayeth Tod Lindberg, in his WaPo piece “The Center-Right Nation Exits Stage Left.” Mr. Lindberg, a former Washington Times journo, a Hoover Institution fellow and an advisor to the McCain campaign, just told us… wait for it… “elections have consequences.” Well, more specifically, elections appear to have some significance as a reflection of how voters are actually thinking. In short, a 52-46 presidential win, at least 57 Senators and a double-digit pickup in the House for the Democrats leads Mr. Lindberg (and anyone without their head up their ass, i.e., those not enmeshed in the Beltway kaffeefklatschkultur) actually means...

Don’t know what to make of the announcement of significant international agreement on inter-governmental oversight of the world’s financial markets at a meeting of world leaders in Washington. It seems that the group of leaders agreed to a joint statement akin to “mistakes were made [by you miserably stupid, greedy, American bastards] for which we will all have to pay for cleaning up.” Or something. But evidently, the leaders of at least the world’s three most populous nations (that would be China, India and the United States) were present, with presumably the other 17 being pretty big themselves, i.e., most...