It seems like just yesterday that Judge John Roberts, Jr. had his nomination to the nation’s highest profile intermediate appellate court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, tied up for nearly two years amidst political wrangling. Well, Judge Roberts, who was part of that crack legal team that successfully wrested victory in the 2000 election on behalf of the Bush-Cheney team (and away from those irritating voters) now gets his justest recompense (at least, if you’re him): an all-expense paid invitation to be the President’s nominee for the current opening on the United States...

Many thanks to Steve, a/k/a the Linkmeister for pointing out that I seem to have left my comments off, in the face of what I considered a personal attack so inappropriate as to warrant serious consideration of ending comments altogether. Well… hopefully, comments are back now… so give it a shot… Anyway, quick note, care of the Jerusalem Post on the love-fest associated with new Iraqi PM Ibrahim Jaafari’s visit to our good buddies in… Tehran… As the article notes, Iran is largely responsible for an awful lot of terrorism and sabotage within Iraq these days, so… well, I guess...

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond is about to take up the case of “unlawful combatant” and dirty bomber suspect Jose Padilla, with a hearing on Tuesday. You will recall our interview with one of Padilla’s attorney’s, Donna Newman, a few months back… There’s not too much I can say about this case: the President contends he has the unilateral authority to detain any citizen on his sole say-so without judicial review or other oversight of any kind. I call that sort of thing “dictatorship”. To be honest, this case, involving a U.S. citizen picked up in the...

“It” would be the Chinese economic machine… our visit to People’s Daily tells us that China’s Central Bank reports China’s foreign exchange (“forex”) reserves on hand (that’s “cash in the bank”) have increased to over $700 billion, with a 51% increase on a year to year basis. We can couple this with the (correct, in my view) observation of a key European Union official that China’s growth and development presented more opportunity than threat to the rest of the world. We talked about this in a recent post… is China’s development an actual threat, or do we just perceive it...

Our visit to Pravda tells us about a major fallen industrial oligarch… but with its usual twist, the oligarch we are talking about is none other than former MCI/Worldcom chief Bernard Ebbers, just convicted and sentenced to 25 years for fraud charges associated with pumping up the books of the failed telecom giant. Regardless of his philanthropic activities, the Worldcom bankruptcy, then the largest in American history, resulted in untold billions of dollars in lost value, including presumably by the usual widows and orphans who invest in “rock solid telephone companies”. Bernie’s books-cooking also helped bring an acceleration to an...

And nature, as we all know from our elementary physics, abhors a vacuum. But a vacuum seems to be what’s going on in… Fallujah! According to this from the Grey Lady, some eight months after a bloody siege cost the lives of over 1,500 Iraqis and quite a few American marines… once again, that troubled (and troubling) Iraqi city may, once again, be a power vacuum used by insurgents to carry out nasty shit attacks in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq. This is a chronic problem our military faces: the occupations of (First World) Germany and Japan involved an occupying...

I realize many of you may disagree with me on this, but I consider the blood of dozens of Iraqi children today who were blown up and killed by evil fucks in Baghdad who launched a suicide bomber at them while American military personnel were dispensing candy to be on the President’s hands. Period. Argument not to the contrary not accepted, this time. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind — none– that every single child murdered today would still be alive right now if Saddam Hussein were still in power. And would that mean the world in general...

Your talking dog is enjoying the mmm mmm goodness of watching the President and his principal advisor Karl Rove twist, twist, twist in the wind… evidently, the official line is “the President has full confidence in Karl Rove”. It’s unclear that the President has had a bowel movement since 1998 that was not orchestrated by his beloved “boy genius” advisor, Karl “Turdblossom” Rove, a master of getting a way with politicial and other dirty tricks who may have (finally) upped the ante a tad too much at… treason. Bless her heart, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter from the Buffalo, NY area has...

American Secretary of State Incompetetentalleezza Rice earns her moniker… particularly with her brilliant decision to be the first U.S. Sec. of State in over 20 years to fail to attend the “ASEAN” summit of East Asian and Pacific powers. Evidently, “Dr.” Rice has other, more important things to do… like… well… whatever they are. She refused to discuss the (asinine and insanely counterproductive and disrespectful-to-some-of-our-most-important-allies-in-the-region) move, instead saying “I’m here to take questions about the tsunami.” While visiting one stricken area in Thailand, the Secretary of State blessed the locals with an entire 41 minutes of her time (during which...