By a pair of 5-4 rulings, the extraordinarily conservative (for example, the late Sen. Jesse Helms singlehandedly kept most Bill Clinton appointments off it for years) 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, in the ongoing saga of Saleh al-Marri (his counsel Jonathan Hafetz is interviewed here) ruled that the Bush Adminstration (1) has the power to hold any of us– ANY. OF. US.– indefinitely, solely at the President’s whim, if he invokes the magic word “terrorist”, but (in this case, a very small but) (2) Mr. al-Marri (or whatever poor hapless bastard is involved be he named Padilla, or...

Well, the U.S. of A. has hit another great milestone… our terrorist watch list has hit one million names, and counting, according to the ACLU, which monitors government reports. This 1,000,000 number– which is actually used for the express purpose of hassling people for having the audacity to appear at airports with paid tickets expecting to go anywhere– is a far “harder” number than, say the 8,000,000 of “Main Core”— and will have much more immediate real world impact for the lucky duckies poor bastards whose names are on it… which might include you and me, for all we know...

We’re having quite a celebration of the 75th anniversary of some of the New Deal reforms that have finally, finally been dismantled after decades of fierce ideological battling (and money-grubbing… I speak of the Glass-Steagall Act‘s “wall” between investment banking and commercial banking and a separate package of savings & loans intended to engage in home loans…)… all of which have been effectively dismembered by denizens of both ideologically supportive Republicans and Democrats (yes, Joe Biden, I mean you) willing to sell out to the highest bidding banks and plutocrats as long as it meant campaign money and propped up...

I know, I know. The latest excuse for a Simon & Garfunkel title is the announcement by Treas. Sec. Paulson on the machinations of the government bailouts of the twin pillars of our housing finance system, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The details aren’t in yet, but these two private companies that everyone knows are part of the government (sort of) are going to be part of the government (really) in the form of a taxpayer-sponsored bailout, which, we are well beyond the point of arguing with, as our entire financial structure had been based on people borrowing from the...

In this op-ed called “The Real-Life “24” of Summer 2008,” the Grey Lady’s Frank Rich does a nice synthesis of what (the few remaining!) regular readers here will vaguely recognize as one of the sort of the themes of this blog (as if there were any!), to wit, the unConstitutional and unAmerican abuses and outright war crimes committed by the Bush Administration have probably not made us any safer from the threat of Islamist terrorism, as well as being unacceptable to any people who call themselves bound to the rule of law. This is not to say, of course, that...

Yes, yes… having at various times, gone for a series of Beatles titles, then the Stones, Dylan… could I resist going for S & G…? Apparently not, as we get this story, that of negotiations over a “bridge agreement” vis a vis continuation of American forces in Iraq past the deadline for the expiration of the UN mandate for our presence later this year, meaning that the President’s imperial plans for permanently sticking the next Administration with a permanent colonial-maintenance force seem to have gone awry. Such is the nature of golum monsters, in this case, the golum created by...

That, of course, would be the reunion of Ma Bell and Big Brother in the form of the ‘telecom immunity” portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) repeal reform that, anticlimactically, passed the Senate yesterday 68-29. For the record, Obama voted yea, Clinton voted nay, and McCain, a big supporter ofthe measure, was campaigning in Ohio and did not vote, as if it mattered. Many will (rightly) note Obama’s weaselly position on this (trying to tepidly support a tepid amendment to strip telecom immunity, while lending support to the law as a whole) as reminiscent of his support of...

That would actually be referring to my own college class, Columbia’s (thankfully) final all-male class, C’83, which I share with, inter alia, Democratic Presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, Libertarian Vice-Presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root, not-a-federal-judge Miguel Estrada, and now… Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli. Brauchli was just named to that position after recently serving in a similar capacity with The Wall Street Journal, and he will assume his duties in September. I, of course, will continue to provide you with my observations of the universe from my perch here somewhere inside Stately Dog Manor, in absolute obscurity and relative...

So, is there anyone out there who still thinks that it was a complete coincidence that during the daring hostage rescue down Colombia way in which three Americans and former Colombian Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt were rescued, that John McCain just happened to be in that country? If so, Al Giordano strongly suggests that you think again, and also suggests that Uncle Sam’s sticky fingers are all over this one and that the timing of Sen. McCain’s visit to Colombia is all part of the staging. While this sort of thing does bespeak some level of competence on the part...

Wells Dixon is a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and in that capacity represents a number of current and former prisoners of the United States military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On July 1, 2008, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Dixon by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, corrected as appropriate by Mr. Dixon. The Talking Dog: You have recently commented that the government’s answer to the depression it is causing by subjecting its GTMO guests to near-total isolation is to involuntarily medicate them. Can you comment on this, and...