It’s hard to put enough superlatives on comedian George Carlin, who passed away at 71 of heart failure. He took “edgy” comedy all the way to mainstream. Most famous for “the seven dirty words” that was just one bit of an infinite variety that basically came down to the theme of how absurdly hypocritical our entire social order is, and how, when it is called out, the only rational response is laughter (albeit often uncomfortable laughter). One bit, for example, concerned a suggestion “by the government” that Mohammed Ali “change jobs”. The government said “we want you to kill people...

Rebecca Dick is Counsel to the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Dechert, LLP. Ms. Dick represents four Afghan nationals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two more previously detained there but transferred to a prison in Afghanistan, and two more released home to Afghanistan. On June 20, 2008, I had the privilege of interviewing her, by e-mail exchange. The Talking Dog Where were you on September 11th? Rebecca Dick: I was at work in law offices on the banks of the Potomac River. We could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon, and I remember thinking, “this...

That would be the incomparable Cyd Charisse, who passed away at 86. IMHO, she was the fireballer of American cinematic dance… just wham, down the middle, often at 100 m.p.h. or more. While one can understand NBC’s interests in touting the late Tim Russert, who untimely (and most unfortunately) passed away at 58, one does wonder why other media outlets are in full hagiography mode. Danny Schechter comes pretty close to mirroring my own thoughts on Russert. I will just say that Russert had the most intimidating wind-up in the game, after which the ball would invariably cross the middle...

It’s pretty much the only question one can ask of that sell-out of a G.W. Bush appointed Fed chairman, given that Bernanke had the audacity to tell a Senate panel that improving the nation’s health care delivery was one of the most serious challenges facing the nation. Hasn’t Bernanke figured out that if the 47 million Americans without health insurance want it, they should just pay for it themselves? That Republican ideology dictates that the most sensible health plan of all comes down to just three words: don’t get sick, and that affirmation of American rugged individualism is, by definition...

While fear of terrorism has, mostly thanks to the political needs of our current ruling party , become a national obsession, the reality is that Americans have much more sensible reasons to fear natural disasters, and of such disasters, the only ones I am aware of that consistently inflict death and destruction in all fifty states… are floods. And currently, there is a doozy of a flood that has resulted in the evacuation of much of Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Mahablog’s Barb has more.) Cedar Rapids was the venue of the first trial I handled as an attorney, back in 1987,...

I have said before that the future viability of our republic rests perilously in the pen-wielding hand of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Thus far, at least, Kennedy has, as he did two years ago in Hamdan, held fast… as he did again in today’s (naturally, 5-4) decision in Boumediene, holding that the Constitution’s express prohibition against suspension of habeas corpus means exactly that, and hence, Guantanamo detainees have a Constitutional right to habeas corpus relief in American federal courts. Much more will be written about this in terms of “rebuke” to the Bush Administration, though this is arguably the third such...

With the sole exception of invoking the Article II Constitutional provision that would arguably remove the President’s pardon power in cases of impeachment, I see no point in the forced-vote-on-impeachment that Congressman Dennis Kucinich is now bringing forth. The good news is that impeachment doesn’t have to leave the lower House unless it wins a majority, and it won’t, so Obama needn’t be embarrassed with this. But other Congress members will doubtless have to deal with this. It’s not the substance: the President has committed enough impeachable offenses so that just reading the articles took five hours (and that doesn’t...

Not quite the self-critical evaluation we know President George W. Bush is utterly incapable of, but still, this Times of London article reporting an interview in which the President “regrets” his Iraq war rhetoric (“bring it on,” “wanted dead or alive,” “nucular”) may come close. It seems that the Presidsent may have “inadvertently” convinced, say, everyone else on Earth that he wasn’t “you know, a man of peace” and actually wanted to have a gratuitous, unprovoked war with Iraq. Funny how being reelected as “the war president” and beating your political opponents with the club of accusations of their being...

At some point, we begin to go back to that (literally) revolutionary document attributed to Philadelphia, 4 July 1776, and ask ourselves… wtf? In part, the reason that the goings-on at that little slice of America at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are so important, is because of just how at odds those goings-on are with the winning side of the American Revolution (though quite consistent with the then behavior of the monarchy on the losing side). And this is an area where, notwithstanding the Supreme Court about to issue a third major opinion in four years, the courts by and large...

In our ever more interconnected world, something always has to give when some fundamental is fundamentally out of whack. And sometimes, that something is everything, all at once. Which takes us to yesterday, when the Dow Industrial Average fell nearly 400 points amidst a simultaneous spike in oil prices (of over $11 to nearly $139/bbl) and unemployment (of around half a percent to 5.5%). All of which is to say, if, say, Alan Greenspan were publicly flayed and then burned at the stake, would it solve any of this? No, of course not… but it might be helpful nonetheless, as...