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...

No, not any of the usual myriad goods, often inexpensive, imported from China, but Communist China’s interrogation methods were evidently imported for use at Guantanamo Bay, according to the Grey Lady. Specifically, a chart shown to interrogators at GTMO was derived from a report by Alfred D.Biderman, a sociologist then working for the U.S. Air Force, which discussed how the Communist Chinese would obtain false confessions from American military personnel. Of course, this is…yesterday’s news… today! We give you this snippet, from my July, 2007 interview with Michael Otterman: The Talking Dog: Can you comment on the recently disclosed to...

Yes, we know stupid is also usually good politics in the United States. Which is why Sen. Obama is unquestionably on his way to becoming our President, as he has shown the ruthlessness to adopt the evidently expedient (“tough sounding”) position on three troubling issues of the day, damn how I feel about them…: (1) FISA telecom immunity, (2) the Supreme Court child rape caseand (3) the Supreme Court gun ban case. The point… if there is one… is that no one who can get themselves elected to any office in this country (let alone Senator… or President) can divorce...

“It” is the Grey Lady’s account of the resurgence of al Qaeda strength in the form of training camps and evident operational capacity now located in the tribal areas of Pakistan (a distance of perhaps 100 miles or so from their previous epicenter in Afghanistan) as a direct and inevitable result of the Bush Administration’s diversion of assets from The Hunt for bin Laden (TM) to The Excellent Iraq Adventure (TM). The conspiratorial among us will say things like “oil is thicker than blood…” or, well, things like that. The more realistic will simply point out what Sen. Obama has...

Daddy’s breaking all the rules and letting me do a mid-week V.P.P., since tomorrow is the last day of school (and only a half day at that!) Today was pajama day, which sounds more fun than it is, since mostly, we all lie down on the floor with our blankets and pillows and stuffed animals and read to ourselves, because by this time of the school year, the teacher has had it. Oh yes… that’s Demi Lovato up there, from “Camp Rock,” as if I’ve seen it, which I haven’t. Anyway, Daddy (supernatural? alien? just plain mean?) cut off the...

It seems like its going to be a big week for U.S. District Court Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C. Bruce the Veep sends us this from TPM in which Judge Bates, handling the litigation from the House of Representatives to enforce its subpoena against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, asks the logical question “why are you running to court to enforce your subpoena by litigation when you already have the power to arrest?” Judge Bates, appointed by George W. Bush, who has already ruled in favor of the Administration in the lawsuit brought over disclosure of records of the...