This comment from Jeralyn at Talkleft on the Obama Administration’s proposal to alter the rights of terrorism suspects (Charlie Savage in the Grey Lady has more) by delaying the time before which they would be presented to a judge for arraignment so that they may be waterboarded interrogated longer… pretty much sums up my rather unified feelings toward the third term of the Bush Administration first (and at the rate things are going, hopefully only) term of the Obama Administration; specifically, Jeralyn’s take: Taking rights taken from terror suspects today just makes it easier to take them from all of...

I have little to add to what Greenwald or Paul Campos has about my college classmate and President Barack Obama’s choice of Elena Kagan as his nominee to replace retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. The Cliffnotes version is that, like Barack himself, Kagan has left virtually no paper trail, and, as an ideological matter, is a complete tabula rasa (that’s pretty much code for “stands for nothing”) but has convinced smart glib people that she is smart and glib, and as a Harriet Miers-like cipher and loyal retainer won’t give Barack too much trouble in the nominating process,...

I’m not complaining mind you, that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad evidently did not apparently get training from any serious terrorist organization, as widely reported… the last thing I’d like to see is yet another major atrocity in the heart of the city in which I and my family live and work. But this is a week that must make us ask over and over and over again… how do people get their jobs? Mr. Shahzad, for example, got an MBA degree and had a job in the financial sector… despite , evidently, being enough of a loser to...

It seems essential to believe that furriners, especially those people (in this case, from Pakistan) must be invariably involved in nefarious plots, and hence, this “breaking news” report that the person wanted for questioning in the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square has FOREIGN connections, As usual, we forget that whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing, and we can expect the usual suspects to draw their own conclusions, which, of course, will validate their own world view that all Mexicans illegal aliensswarthy furriners– ‘specially them Muslims– is out to get us. I’ll just say, maybe, and...

The Grey Lady joins what I guess must be a chorus wanting to know why the Obama Administration “didn’t do more… and faster…” with respect to the disastrous Gulf Coast oil rig disaster and mega-spill. At least we already know why the oil company involved, BP, didn’t ask for more help sooner and take decisive action sooner: because it is a profit-driven enterprise, with every incentive to cut corners to maximize profits, damn the human and environmental costs. That’s capitalism folks: we’re supposed to admire that attitude. Indeed, we’re supposed to admire it when the Government behaves the same way…...

The pointlessness of American detention policy in the fiasco formerly known as the war on terror is best exemplified by the peculiarly awful case of Omar Khadr, whose poorly conceived military commission trial appears to have been revivified this week, Khadr, you will recall from my interview with his former attorney Rick Wilson among other places, was captured as a 15 year old child in Afghanistan, after American forces bombed the residential compound he and his family were in., Supposedly Khadr threw a grenade that killed an American soldier and wounded another. Even if true, last I looked, Afghanistan was...

Well, whaddaya know? It seems that those real estate declines on which the masters of the universe Goldman Sachs claims it lost money as a “defense” among other things to the recent S.E.C. civil enforcement action against it.,.. were, surprise,, surprise, in fact very profitable to the firm, because, because of course, the game is rigged, and Goldman could short the real estate market knowing bloody well it could bring it down itself if it had to to make sure the firm (and more importantly, certain individuals) profited extremely handsomely. That’s how a rigged game works. The only suckers are...

A federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin made the legally correct (and entirely irrelevant) decision that the National Day of Prayer is an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of (or from) religion, as mandated by the First Amendment, With all due respect to the (oh so self-important) “serious minded” atheists: who the f*** cares? Americans are dying, right now, in every sense and every way! For starters,. our countrymen are dying in misguided, pointless imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are dying of the effects of obesity at a rate never before seen in human history (and not likely to...

Not quite sure of the science behind it, but just the threat would make most sane, intelligent people (thereby ruling out many Americans, of course) crap in their pants. That of course, is the possibility that increasing global temperatures might increase volcanic activity on Iceland. The current eruption of an unpronounceable volcano in Iceland has pretty much shut down air travel in much of Europe and is otherwise… bad. Interestingly, increased airborne particulate matter (as spews out of volocanoes) might temporarily mask the trend of rising global temperatures… who knows… Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes… oh my. And yet… don’t you think...

I mean that in the Shakespearean sense, that of the only character generally permitted to speak the unvarnished truth, because, well, he is, you know, a fool. A fool, even if, of course, he is, speaking the truth. And hence, we get Congressman Ron Paul’s address to the Southern Republican leadership conference, in which he tells his fellow Republicans the unpleasant truth that pretty much cleans them out of talking points, wait for it, i.e. Barack Obama is not a “socialist” after all, but is instead (like most of the Republican audience he was addressing, who had selected Mitt Romney...