Hard exactly what to make of the third major A.Q. figure to recently release a videotape, today, on an “extremist website”, in this case a video by Al Qaeda overall “number two” and the man widely viewed as its “operational” head supervillain, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. This taunting videotape arrives shortly after similar tapes from OBL himself and Al Qaeda in Iraq (TM) leader Zarqawi… coming as it does in a bloody April for American troops, as well as a particularly bloody political period for the Bush Administration as the lethal combination of high oil prices, GOP corruption, legislative malaise… and that...

Nope. Republicans of the current era could never, ever be accused of that. The uninformed electorate is our best customer, to paraphrase a New York area men’s clothing store’s tagline. Thus, it should come as no surprise that some of the brilliant ideas for dealing with high oil prices that have emerged from the geniuses in the Republican majority in the senate include a $100 “gas tax holiday” (in the form of a Treasury sponsored rebate check… thank you for driving an SUV) or more funding for “alternative fuels”… the President, down on the Gulf Coast for another photo op...

I’m sure you’re all aware that the original name of the Excellent Iraq Adventure (TM) was none other than “Operation Iraqi Liberation (TM)”. The problem with such a name is obvious: it creates a subliminal dissonance in constantly saying “it’s not about oil” when the brand name you chose for it has a convenient acronym of O.I.L. (Hence “Operation Iraqi Freedom”– OIF– was born.) Anyway, I guess we need to come up with something like “Operation Hold the House” or “Operation Fool the Rubes So we can Win the Mid-terms” or something like that. Because reminiscent of the old SNL...

Banking that there is no limit to the stupidity of at least a plurality of the American people (and on this point, I may well agree with them), the Bush Administration announced an investigation into possible price-gouging-at-the-pump as the reason for the nation’s record high retail gasoline prices (in marginal, not-inflation-adjusted) terms. This, of course, follows the kabuki-like “pressure” to do so from GOP Congressional leaders which I recently alluded to in this post over at the American Street. Oy. Bush foreign policy and energy policy have almost been designed to drive up the price of oil (just as his...

Such is the rather upbeat take by our friend Scott Lemieux of a trend among recent lower federal courts to ignore the weasel words of the infamous Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision, and actually use the decision itself for the proposition that the precious rights of voters shall not be diluted by legislative schemes intended to do so, such as recently, one in Ohio duly voided by the Sixth Circuit (based in Cincinatti). The Supreme Court, much like some of my employers used to do when giving some particular day as a holiday, would say “this applies today, but...

This week, we’ll give you that adorable “family values” setting Augie Doggie and Doggy Daddy (a/k/a Dear Old Dad). Unlike some of our entries where the subject’s being, you know, a talking dog, is actually a fascinating metaphor (like Mr. Peabody, for example), these two could have been any animal, or even people… I understand that in the usual Hanna Barbera recycling process, they were derived from some talking mice (no not these…) While superficially, I am reminded of perhaps myself and the Loquacious Pup, there are a number of immediate striking differences. First, like many patriarchal 1950’s era fantasies...

The CIA announced that a veteran CIA employee (the Associated Press asserts that her name is Mary McCarthy…last assigned to the CIA’s inspector general’s office looking into allegations of torture at prisons in Iraq) was fired for speaking to reporters about the CIA ghost prisons in Eastern Europe that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize to Dana Priest of the Washington Post. As we know, there are good leaks, that support the parochial interests of the Bush family, their principal campaign contributors, and their family retainers… and there are bad leaks, that, well, don’t. This apparently was a bad leak, and...

It would seem that a deal is in the offing, to wit, the unpopular-among-the-Sunnis-Kurds-and-Bushmen Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has agreed to step aside and make way for his fellow Dawa party member Jawad al-Maliki to assume the post. This, as we all know, will be the instant panacea we have all been hoping for, and within days, in addition to all remaining Iraqi schools being painted and hospitals rebuilt, the oil infrastructure will be quickly restored, security will be in place, Shiite death squads and militias will promptly disband, Sunni insurgents will turn in their weapons, water and electricity...

The Pentagon released another list of names of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While the Pentagon insists that of the 558 names, only around 490 or so are still detained there, this list is, evidently, the most comprehensive to date. The Government’s rationale for not releasing the names of those detained by a supposedly free and law-abiding society before (before it was compelled to do so in legal action brought by the Associated Press) was that “we would be giving al Qaeda a heads up” somehow by even revealing the names. That somehow the organization that we are all supposed...