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...

I have no idea why I’m so amused by the reports of now 4-time champion Joey Chestnut downing 54 Nathans hot dogs in ten minutes to win the annual hot dog eating contest at Coney Island yet again, other than it takes place in Brooklyn every year, and is an amusing slice of Americana. Of course, it was also amusing that the prior champion (Mr. Kobiyashi of Japan, a six time winner), managed to get himself arrested for trying to crash the proceedings (there seems to be some contractual limitation on his competing himself… for whatever reason, he won’t sign...

That of course, sums up the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings pertaining to the confirmation of Elena Kagan, currently Solicitor General of the United States, to the position of Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. I have listened to portions of the question and answer session on the radio, and heard hints of the current Republican challenge-point, to wit, the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom Ms. Kagan served as a law clerk in the 1980’s, was “too Black activist.” Ms. Kagan’s observations in the 1990’s that these kinds of hearings featured inane questions and evasive, if any, “answers”...