A huge cache of classified military documents from soldiers in the field and other military personnel providing a never before seen view of the Afghan war has evidently been leaked on Wiki-leaks, and previews have been given to England’s Guardian, to the New York Times, and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Among the details released are the larger than expected (which by me was thought to be “pretty large”) extent that Pakistani intelligence services have been helping the Afghan insurgents, , , the White House condemned the release of any and all information that might tell the public what the Government is...

This week, the Grey Lady treats us to the obvious in both its news and vapid op-ed pages. The New York Times is certainly not alone in this department (and I don’t mean that by picking on it, I am suggesting it is unique in its inanity) but it is my hometown paper and all, and supposedly a bastion of liberalness and certainly a bastion of arrogance,,, and well,,, you know! We’ll start with a subject near and dear to my heart, at least my professional one I suppose, and talk about “the law.” We get this Adam Liptak piece...

I’m saddened to hear about the death of long-time (as in forever) broadcaster Daniel Schorr, but a little less so when I saw that he was 93. I figured him for not a day over 87. On the radio, at least, he seemed to still have all his marbles… maybe that was just an act, like his curmedgon thing… which I suspect, was no act. Anyway, I always enjoyed his recitation of conventional wisdom on National ‘Pologist Radio (NPR), not for the conventional wisdom itself, which is every bit as worthless coming from NPR’s airwaves as it is on any...

A special master charged with “tut tutting” but with little actual power to do anything about it has concluded that major Wall Street banks… wait for it… gave out “excessive bonuses” to their most beloved insiders during the 2008 financial crisis. The special master whose job seems to be to “tut tut” (as 11 of the 17 institutions that received what many thought then was unnecessary federal bailout money have easily paid it back… with the miniscule interest demanded, it seems there is little if any ability or authority to “claw back” the “excessive” bonuses which were paid by such...

Look: I love Glenn Greenwald. He has the temerity to get in The One’s [TM] face just about every day, unswayed from the star-struck-teenage-girl bullsh*t that defines most of my brethren and sistren “progressives” in bloggyland, who somehow think because my college classmate The President is on “our team,” that he is “a good guy” who “is on our side” and “means well” notwithstanding his advancement of his predecessor’s (and his predecessor’s, and so forth, back to God knows when) systematic and seemingly inexorable advancement of “the national security state”.. even though, in the case of Barack Obama, he campaigned,...

I was most saddened when Candace told me that Charles Gittings passed away at the extremely untimely age of 57. Charly (whom I interviewed here) epitomized the concept of “citizen activist.”. Charly’s Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions was a kind of one-man-show. It served as both an archive of the misdeeds of those of in power and a back-drop for Charly’s one of a kind advocacy. Despite not having legal training, he submitted a number of amicus curae briefs in major “war on terror” cases that were so brilliant that they downright sung. I can only wish we saw...

Andy writes to advise that he has updated both his definitive Guantanamo prisoner’s list and an index to his archives. For those of us interested in the specifics of the nuts and bolts of America’s little foray into The Dark Side If You Will (TM), Andy’s painstaking work has been utterly indispensable. One does hope that Andy’s work will be a key resource for the time when this nation’s quite irrational obsession with “terrrrorism” will be seen with the same clear-eyed regret with which we now look back on similar hysterics of the past, such as the post-World War I...

The old Thomas Nast cartoons depict political elephants against political donkeys. The reality these days is more jackals vs. pussiespussy cats. Not that I any longer think it makes much difference (if any), but does anyone out there think that in such a contest, the jackals are going to lose to the pussiespussy cats? Me neither. Update: The Obama Administration seems to agree.

Item the first: while Clarence Thomas has been one of the most reliable Republican conservative apparatchiks in history, serving as a complete and polar opposite number to the man he replaced, the activist ground-breaking first Black justice, the legendary Thurgood Marshall, this is still the United States of America, and he, and his relatives are still Black. And hence, when his epileptic nephew Derek Thomas got all uppity and suggested he would leave the hospital rather than do what he was told and assume the position in his hospital gown (or was he just being, you know, epileptic?), he got...

Our friend Roy Edroso identifies the latest brilliant and on-point observation as set forth in the pages of the Grey Lady, to wit, wait for it, certain rich kids don’t want to take standard issue entry level corporate jobs that they feel are beneath them, Roy gives a most excellent meta-analysis of why he thinks The New York Times is behaving in this seemingly clueless way of presenting the “plight” of a most unrepresentative comparator for purposes of assessing just how bad the job market is right now for so many millions of people, to wit, a recent elite college...