Uncategorized

TD law school classmate Harvey Rishikoff has just been summarily sacked as the Guantanamo “convening authority” (i.e. civilian official in charge of the military commissions). Mr. Rishikoff had intervened to stop the absurd “contempt” jailing of the chief defense attorney for the (absurd) Guantanamo military commissions, and tried to have a new facility built because of accusations that defense attorney-client conversations were monitored at existing facilities … anyway, now that the President has reversed the last President’s executive order to close Guantanamo, it seems open season on reason, and so, Harvey is out, as is another Pentagon official associated with...

And so, at long last, the infamous “Nunes Memo” is publicly disseminated, which will, if you are a partisan Trump loyalist, lead you to the conclusion that based upon a Rube Goldberg-like series of events, a series of Republican officials (some of them appointed by Trump himself) have conspired to undermine the rule of law by engaging in a witch-hunt against “poor Carter Page”… how was he to know that innocent contacts with Russian operatives while serving in the Trump campaign could possibly make him a subject of interest… demonstrating that the Mueller investigation is hopelessly biased and Rod Rosenstein...

Yesterday marked sixteen years since the first prisoners were brought to Guantanamo Bay’s current iteration as a permanent holding cell for politically inconvenient Muslim men captured in the inconvenient “pre-drone” stages of our eternal war against everyone else on Earth. Andy has more on a commemoration protest at the White House, which I attended, along with a crowd of people still interested in the subject; one wishes it were larger. Andy himself was there as part of his annual visit to our shores, as was Todd Pierce, with whom I drove down. Andy was one of the speakers, as was...

And we come to the end of the longest year, ever. The President, such as he is, has managed to literally slow down the passage of time, a feat literally at odds with the laws of physics and reality (which he doesn’t believe in anyway). Somehow, the republic is still here, though duly damaged, with forward prospects not the greatest, particularly if the usually feckless Democrats remain so and defy the same odds that their Presidential candidate did in 2016 and fail to take back either house of Congress in the coming midterm elections. Hopefully, the nation will avoid another...

Happy Festivus, everyone. I hope your own Festivus pole has been taken out of the garage, and you are adequately warmed up for your feats of strength and have duly annotated your list of grievances for airing. Given the state of the world right now, with the two largest English speaking nations having chosen to commit suicide as a result of well-executed Russian needling of our most racist and atavistic elements, Russia still unable to deliver clean water through its own plumbing but perhaps more than capable of having its submarines take out undersea data transmission cables, nonetheless looks poised...

Well, I’ve been remiss in blogging all month, but on the occasion on the darkest night of the year in this, the darkest year in the history of our republic, what the hell, right? A Democratic Congresswoman from California suggests that the President will fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller tomorrow or over the weekend, taking advantage of the Christmas media lull (and Congress leaving town) to do so. Of course, another analyst says that the President might avoid the potential firestorm of firing Mueller and instead fire Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, the man who appointed Mueller. Meanwhile, the President...

No, not the mental age of the President (which is closer to about four), even as said President is in the middle of a lengthy trip to Asia where he will hopefully not manage to start World War III. No, I’m talking about my sixteenth finish at the TCS New York City Marathon where I had my maiden voyage as a full-fledged member of the Streakers and Fifteen-plus club, on to my sixteenth finish. It was an unpleasantly rainy day (at least the rain, while persistent, was light and the temperatures were comfortably in the sixties), and I did not...

And so we come to the talking dog’s (the reticent homo sapien behind the talkative canine) 55th birthday. Which means, for those who can’t do arithmetic, that I was born during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Somehow, we survived that. I’d like to think that the republic (and its occupants) will survive the current crisis we are in. OK; that’s pretty much all I have.

While the republic continues its ongoing journey to hell in a hand-basket in front of us because one of our “major” parties is willing to be in league with the Devil (or at least a hostile foreign power) in order to hold power, even if it means, well, the republic going to hell in a hand-basket, your talking dog managed to eke out a finish in his 50th marathon (the goal of 50-states is stuck now at 21 states plus 2 Canadian provinces and D.C., but we’re still working on it!) It was a lovely day, albeit still too hot,...

By now, you are doubtless well-versed in “the worst mass shooting in American history,” which took place in Orlando Las Vegas. Before I go all “meta-” on yo’ asses, I’m going to give you two well laid out thought pieces. The first is from Vox, and gives seventeen things you need to know about America’s uniquely high level of gun violence. For example, with four per cent of the world’s population, we have about half of the privately owned guns, states with the tightest gun control laws have the lowest levels of gun violence, most gun deaths are suicides, we...