After having done all it could to pour combustible fuel on the national bonfire and amplification to the pre-Iraq drumbeat for war… the Grey Lady insists that it now has religion, and hence, gives us this long jeremiad on why the United States should immediately get out of Iraq. Well well. The esteemed “news” institution that employed Saddam-WMD-confabulator Judith Miller and still employs court stenographer Michael Gordon, and who deliberately understated the extent of opposition to the Iraq War in order to hype that war with the twin goals of (1) getting a seat at the tough guys’ table and,...

Such was at one time an advertising slogan for AT&T… it seems an encouragement from a party-line ruling in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (i.e. 2 Republican appointed judges outvoting 1 Democratic appointed judge) in the NSA warrantless eavesdropping case, reversing the Michigan District Court’s ruling that the program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). [In some sense, though I am not a plaintiff, perhaps I should take this personally, given who I have called from time to time to interview… but I digress…] On grounds eerily similar to the bogus reason used by the Supreme Court to...

A cautionary tale this 4th of July (the first time this holiday has come on a Wednesday (IIRC) since I began blogging a week after 9-11… or perhaps not). We bring you this WaPo essay by historian John Fabian Witt (a prof at the alma mater I share with Senator and future President Barack Obama)… also available by clicking on the picture of the American flag, as seen by most of the rest of the world these days. The subject of the essay concerns the rule of law as applicable to war, the spearhead of our President’s agenda to rule...

Our friend Lindsay Beyerstein just lost her father, Dr. Barry Beyerstein; her moving note on his passing is here. My heartfelt condolences go out to Lindsay and to her family on their loss. Here is a post entitled “Al Gore and the Alpha Girls,” from November 2002, one of the best blog posts you will ever read. Its author was Jim Capozzola of the Rittenhouse Review, who, I have had the privilege of meeting and corresponding with. I am sad to say that Jim passed away yesterday. Dr. Beyerstein was 60. Jim was 45. Rest in peace, gentlemen. Rest in...

The other possible headline is “Bush to rule of law: drop dead.” Either applies to the politically craven but desired by the Beltway Courtier class (and GOP-lock Fred Thompson)result… to wit, Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s 30-month sentence to zero— no time– thereby undoing years of work by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and telling a jury and a federal judge (and indeed, a federal court of appeals) to go screw themselves. Well, why not? Poppy Bush pardoned a number of players implicated in Iran-Contra. Ford pardoned Nixon. Clinton pardoned Mark Rich (who was then represented by none other than Scooter Libby)....

The flurry of activity at the close of the just-ended term of the United States Supreme Court just leads one to say, regardless of their ideology, “Wow!” Certainly, the overall trend is that, without the cover of the center-right Sandra Day O’Connor behind which Justice Anthony Kennedy could pretend that he too was also center-right, rather than extreme-hard-right-to-the-point-of-near-psychotic, like the Dubya appointees John “Burn-Witch-Burn” Roberts and Scam Alito, the Reagan-appointed Kennedy’s true relatively right-wing leanings become more visible, and hence, the Court as a whole has shifted to the right on issues from upholding a Congressional ban on a second-term...

Gaillard Hunt is an attorney in private practice in Silver Spring, Maryland. Mr. Hunt represents Pakistani national Saifullah Paracha, a businessman and father of four who was detained by American officials at an airport in Bangkok, Thailand in July 2003, where he was abducted, and in a pattern consistent with other so-called extraordinary renditions, had his clothing removed, and was thrust on a waiting plane and taken to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where he was interrogated for over a year, and then moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been detained ever since. Mr. Paracha suffers from heart...

I’m still too busy laughing at the recent insistence of the Office of the Vice President (with the tacit blessing of the President) that Dick Cheney is above the law (as usual) to comment on it. This time, Cheney and Addington argue that OVP is above the law of handling classified information, because the office of the vice-president, which John Adams and numerous others have regarded as the epitome of a do-nothing post when they held the office– is super-special and part of the legislative branch! Hey, whatever gets you above the law, right? This LATimes piece, “No veep is...

Such is the story we get from this WaPo piece documenting the sorry saga of one Bradley Schlozman, acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights of the United States Justice Department. Schlozman removed a number of career attorneys from key civil rights functions. Those attorneys happened to be women of various ethnic minorities, only to be replaced by White males… to be fair, some of those women were Democrats… (and I understand one couldn’t be trusted because she once voted for McCain). Traditionally, it was felt that “diversity” in the government agency responsible for ensuring diversity elsewhere… is a good...

And so House Speaker Pelosi had to intervene against two of her Democratic denizens (Reps. John Dingell and Rick Boucher, [“D”-Auto-Industry]), and killed their proposals to load up a House energy bill with wet-dreams-for-the-auto-industry, including such measures as pre-empting California’s ability to regulate auto emissions on its own, a measure that has been extraordinarily helpful in reducing air pollution there and elsewhere, and which will be helpful in California efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Well, here we go again: if you want to help Detroit’s real problems, free GM, Ford and Chrysler from their killling health care costs and pension...