While the main arc of civilization goes on as it has for millenia (i.e. the powerful White men may do what they like with complete impugnity, but God help anyone else if they dare engage in similar conduct… or hell, if they do anything at all), one must still look back on 2008 and acknowledge just what an amazing year it has been. Obviously, the fact is, in 220 years of our Constitutional system, no man who was (1) a graduate of Columbia College or (2) not born in the lower 48 or (3) not White had ever been elected...

Andy continues his interview with Stephen Abraham, here.

In the staid op-ed section of the Grey Lady, Krugman laments the counter-stimulative tendencies coming from what he terms “50 Herbert Hoovers,” to wit, state governors (more specifically, state governments) that, amidst collapsing revenues in the current financial crisis, will respond at the precise moment that more state and local spending is needed by instead cutting such spending, thereby exacerbating downward pressure on the economy. He’s right, of course, but the issue becomes two-fold: what immediate steps can be taken to ease the current financial crisis, and what reforms can be imposed to ensure a better system. For the latter,...

Is there any way to reconcile the various strands of (miserable) news out there? A maniac divorced a grand total of one week decides to go on a murder suicide rampage in Southern California, dressed as Santa Claus. American officials are urging both sides to behave calmly, as evidently, both nuclear armed South Asian powers, India and Pakistan, appear to be engaging in troop movements toward each other. And this… only a year after Benazir “Pinky” Bhutto was killed . Amidst other miserable economic news, after soft holiday sales, retailers expect even softer post-holiday sales. We won’t even discuss the...

And we’ll belay the customary Festivus airing of grievances to say… “I’m Rick WARREN, bitches.” And to all, a good Festivus.

Andy hits it out of the park (I suppose, in cricket terms, “a six”)with his interview with Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham of the Army Reserve, the indispensable man vis a vis justice for Guantanamo detainees. Col. Abraham, who sat on one “combatant status review tribunal,” or CSRT, submitted a critical affidavit in the Boumediene case that so incensed the Supreme Court that it granted reargument to permit review after first declining review for the first time in over half a century. Oh… the one panel that Col. Abraham sat on (“Panel 23”) just happened to be the one sitting on...

It seems almost inevitable that as the perceived economic benefits of free trade collapse, more countries have started slapping up protectionisht measures, such as tariffs. As WaPo’s piece notes, increased tariff activity (such as the United States’s Smoot-Hawley tariffs) are widely blamed for exacerbating the Great Depression… and so… here we go again. In some sense, we have no one to blame but ourselves for not pushing harder to get the “Doha Round” of international free trade talks through, largely by not making it worthwhile enough for developing countries (and because of our, and Europe’s, insistence on coddling our already...

Glenn Greenwald hits a walk-off grand-slam with this piece, critical of Beltway NEO-CONventional wisdom that “oh, we’ll all have the vapors should law-breaking by those in the highest circles of power actually be punished.” The specific target of Glenn’s baseball bat is Ruth Marcus of WaPo, and her justification of Ronald Reagan’s pardon of Watergate’s then still unknown “Deep Throat,” Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt, for illegal wiretapping and surveillance of dirty hippies and others on Nixon’s enemies’ list. Marcus’s case is that there is some kind of a delicate balance between national security and upholding the law, and that...

Our post title, widely attributable to William Gladstone (though some say to William Penn) takes on a special resonance today, as in the Guantanamo litigation, which, after some men have been in what has been determined to be unlawful American detention for nearly seven years, the very, very first GTMO detainees released pursuant to court order (a pathetic total of three men) reached their home country of Bosnia. To be honest, I write this post more in sorrow than in anger. As the Bush Administration comes to an end, only the most hardened dead enders have anything to say in...

The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate to its lowest level ever, in turn prompting a one day stock market rally. Specifically: The central bank cut its target for the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to each other, from 1 percent to a target range of 0 percent to 0.25 percent, the lowest rate on record. Although the Fed has no more room to reduce the interest rate — it has been cut 10 times in 15 months — the bank’s leaders said in a statement that they would use “all available tools” to bolster the economy....