Candace writes to me from Tbilisi, Georgia, and passes along this press release from the United States Department of Justice, advising that three Guantanamo detainees have been released to the Republic of Georgia, pursuant to agreement between the United States and Georgian governments. Candace has asked me to tell you that one of those released is none other than her client, Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi. From time to time, I have let you in on Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s saga. He is a Libyan national almost exactly my age, who was just trying to live a quiet life as a baker in Afghanistan...

As our esteemed members of Congress meet this weekend to do what Bill Clinton could not get done, and (perhaps) pass a bill called “health care reform,” the Tea Party movement just wants you to know that they are incredible sports. If “health care reform” actually passes Congress and is signed into law, our Tea Party movement friends just want us to know that they don’t really mean the thing about gun violence… it’s, you know, a rhetorical device. Honestly, I don’t much like the basic “reform” myself. The basic bill, as I understand it, quite literally forces people by...

When questioned by an irrelevant member of the irrelevant minority party, Attorney General Eric Holder suggested that if Osama bin Laden were captured, he would not be read his Miranda warnings… because he won’t be captured… er, he won’t be captured alive. And this is precisely why we will not, ever, win the so-called “war on terror”. The terrorists have already won. Yes, Attorney General Holder was on track when he suggested to John Culberson, the moron Republican from Texas (excuse the redundancy) that OBL would have comparable rights to Charles Manson. But then the Congressman deked and suggested that...

On this insanely rainy and unpleasant weekend here in the New York area, we give you this “profound thought” (from a chapter entitled “Profound Thought Number 15”) from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery: I understood that I was suffering because I couldn’t make anyone else around me feel better. I understood that I have a grudge against… [them] because I’m incapable of being useful to them, because there’s nothing I can do for them. They are already too fargone in their sickness, and I am too weak. I can see their symptoms clearly but I’m not skilled...

In the long run, we’re all dead, of course (a quote widely attributed to John Maynard Keynes). But… in the short run, some of us can go on “the long run”… anyway, to add to my 25 marathon finishes, we add yesterday’s USATF Championship/Caumsett Park 50-K, around 5 miles longer than a marathon. Only the showing up of five more people who hadn’t pre-registered kept me from an age group medal… bastards! While not quite expiating the demons of last year’s failed attempt at a 50-miler, it does, as Mrs. TD suggests, begin to put me in the realm of...

It’s all just a broken record at this point, but the President and his feckless Democratic allies (who f’ed not just all of us and the Constitution, but each other with their bigoted cowardice on Guantanamo and the war on terror) will ultimately reap what they have sown in terms of their service of the Bush Administration’s agenda come Election Day, when one, if not both houses of Congress will be returned to the Republicans, despite the fact that most people still hate them too. Thing is, it’s pretty automatic: if you try to do things that David Broder and...

The unbelievably severe earthquake centered near Concepcion, Chile has left at least 700 dead, with nearly 2 million displaced and God knows what else when the full extent is ascertained, As horrible as its ultimate toll is, at the end of the day, the earthquake will prove less destructive in Chile than last month’s quake in Haiti. Chile, the site of the most severe earthquake ever recorded, had instituted and actually implemented building codes to deal with earthquakes, and it is a far richer country than Haiti able to make sure of this (at least, far better able than Haiti…...

I have been lamenting of late that an America who derives its “nutrition” from twinkies, its “entertainment” from “reality television” and its state of being from prozac… is not going to be populated with the kind of people able to push-back when the forces of totalitarianism descend upon them. And hence, my never-ending quest to note the outrageous injustices being committed by our government in the name of “security” over and over again here always has a backdrop of a cowed people generally unwilling to do much, or anything, about them. Today, just a few minutes looking on Memeorandum, and...

An incredible career of being one of the greatest ass-kissers in the history of the American military– a guy who graduated in the bottom third of his West Point class who managed to quickly rise from lieutenant colonel to the rank of four star general in barely five years without even remotely being involved in anything resembling combat– and parlaying that and other roles into the virtual living embodiment of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Ruler of the Queen’s Navee“… comes to an end, as former Secretary of State Alexander Haig has passed away at 85. Like so many others, Haig’s most...

Just as Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” is pretty much the only reliable news source on American broadcast television, so it seems, it only has one reliable counterpart in the American print media, and “America’s Finest News Source” tells it like it is again, with this article, in which Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke finally lets us in on the dirty little secret of our culture: money is just a product of collective psychosis– an illusion. The fact is, gold bugs… try eating your gold when you get really hungry. It’s not just money (and precious metals) we’re deluded about– much of...