The ink wasn’t even dry on John Ashcroft’s long overdue resignation, before the President announced his choice to replace Ashcroft as our nation’s attorney general: White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. Notice that the usual Democratic spokesmen, Senators Chuck Schumer and Pat Leahy of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both expressed what appeared to praise of the (perceived to be moderate) Gonzales. They are simply telegraphing what I assure you will be a smooth and painless confirmation process for Gonzales, because… he is perceived to be moderate… Of course, Gonzales is anything but, having penned memoranda justifying the President’s “inherent” power akin...

Not even his resignation today (along with that of Commerce Secretary Don Evans) could stop Attorney General John Ashcroft from continuing to pursue the Bush Administration’s obsession with pre-cradle to grave control of the most private aspects of your lives. Case in point, is the appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision which precluded federal prosecutions against Oregon doctors (acting pursuant to a state law) who prescribed lethal dosages of drugs to cancer patients to hasten their deaths and ease their pain. I’m sure we can look forward to the Supreme Court backing up their boy by the usual 5-4 decision....

A federal district judge in Washington halted the process of military commissions deciding the fates of at least four of the perpetual prisoners now in illegal confinement in the American gulag at Guantanimo Bay, Cuba. “Unless and until a competent tribunal determines that petitioner is not entitled to protections afforded prisoners of war under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention … of Aug. 12, 1949, he may not be tried by military commission for the offenses with which he is charged,” U.S. District Judge James Robertson said in his ruling. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen, was lucky enough to...

In my case, completing the preposterous “two marathons on two consecutive weekends”, that featured a 5:55 (and still alive) finish in Washington, D.C.’s Marine Corps Marathon, and today, completing what appears to be the fastest marathon I have run since I was 19, with today’s ING New York City Marathon finish in a shade under 5 hours, 4 minutes. Many thanks to Mrs. TD and the Loquacious Pup, for cheering us on in Brooklyn, TD friend Paul for cheering us on in Queens, and Mr. Crabcakes for coming out in Manhattan (and buying your talking dog a much needed bottle...

Care of everybody’s favorite blogging ventriloquist Joe Gandelman we give you this (apparently documented) story of a talking dog out of Russia. Given that our own site features a talking dog (already), visits from a typing crab, frequent references to a simian president, and hosts an entire “dog run” of over 200 assorted other creatures (most of them classified as dog breeds), let’s just say… we don’t really need the competition. Anyway, let’s wish Yula a hearty zdrastvityeh, or however you say “howdie” bi ruskya.

Having achieved their mission (the reelection of the Imperium), our military men and women now get their reward: the opportunity to kill hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent civilians in the course of an insanely ill advised all-out assault on Falluja. It is widely believed that the combination of the casualties and the resentment we will cause by doing this will help to undermine “the elections in Iraq scheduled for January” that we dangled out there to the rube voters here. In the end, there was no reason for Bush to have done that. Our voters came out in record numbers...

Two stories out of the Middle East. First, in Axis of Evil TM news, this brief BBC retrospective and interviews of two of the players on this, the 25th anniversary of the taking of American embassy hostages in Tehran, Iran. While many, like me, believe that our ongoing refusal to engage Iran in any meaningful manner (for twenty five years now, and counting) is probably not the greatest of ideas, most likely because of it, the Iranian people by and large like us (joining perhaps only the Israelis in the region in doing that). Of course, in honor of the...

The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by Wallace Stevens Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how...

It appears that Sudanese army and police forces have surrounded at least three refugee camps in the Darfur region of that country, forcing relief agencies to remove workers and cutting off refugees in the camps from the outside world. Apparently, “angry Arabs” are gathering near the camps, supposedly in retaliation for the kidnappings of a number of Arabs by the Darfur rebel groups, who are mostly Black Africans. Chosing the cover of an American election to minimize, or at least delay, responsive action from the rest of the world, just might not be a coincidence. None of this bodes well:...

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