Coming as no surprise whatsoever given the Senate’s recent action described here, the Democratic-led House of Representatives, which has proven every bit as worthless as the Democratic-led Senate, joined the upper house in selling out further vast swathes of civil liberties to the Bush Administration and passed the “temporary” FISA repeal (thereby permitting unlimited electronic eavesdropping by the federal government, as long as an appropriate official utters the phrase “it’s to protect us against terrrrrrrrorists”), rather than take a vacation in August and be called bad names by those mean Republicans. Here’s the thing: in practical terms, the Bush Administration...

Ah, don’t we all remember August, 2002? We were all getting ready for that manly celebration of September 11th +1.0, when the President could tell us how manly he handled the whole thing because he showed up a week later with a bullhorn, kind of like how he did back at dear old Yale and Andover with the boy-cheerleader teams. Andy Card told us we didn’t roll out new products in August. And I concluded that a war in Iraq was being played for domestic political purposes, to wit, to corner Democrats into a no win situation of either supporting...

Not much to add to the commentary surrounding the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis yesterday that has killed at least four people. Others have expressed anger that America’s obsession with tax cuts at the expense of maintaining infrastructure has resulted in, well, this. I will simply recall that shortly after September 11th, one of my fears was crossing the bridges here, either into Manhattan or other points, for fear of terrorism. Turns out, of course, that as we learned from the steampipe explosion next to my old office building, or the bridge collapse in Minnesota… we need to be eternally...

Kenneth D. Ackerman practices law in Washington, D.C., and has served as a government official in both the legislative and executive branches of government. He is the author of four books, his most recent, “Young J. Edgar: Hoover, The Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties“, chronicling the response of then Attorney General Mitchell Palmer to a series of anarchist bombings and other violence around the United States in the aftermath of the First World War, including one at his own house that nearly killed him and his family. Palmer directed a series of raids to round-up, and eventually...

I guess celebrity deaths famously “come in threes”, but I cannot recall another instance where the three involved were all regarded as visionaries, if not revolutionary geniuses, in their respective fields: legendary football coach Bill Walsh passed away at 75, legendary late night talk show host Tom Snyder passed away at 71, and legendary film director Ingmar Bergman passed away at 89. Well, at least those three men managed to make it into their 70’s or beyond. No explanation for why the youngest member of the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts collapsed at his vacation home in...

Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake gives us this account of a story that our usual “All Paris, Lindsay, Britney, Nicole, Brangelina and their friends all the time” press seems to have ignored… i.e., 24 out of 93 United States Attorney positions are now vacant, and likely will be for the rest of the 541 or so remaining days of the Bush Administration, as not so much as one proposed replacement has been sent to Congress for action. Given the quality of personnel that this President has all-too-frequently placed in high positions in the Department of Justice, starting with the two...

The chick famous for being Paris’s sidekick and Lionel’s daughter took a plea deal in L.A. for driving under the influence, and will undergo rehab, pay a stiff fine, and serve four more days in jail than Scooter did. In so doing, she joins her good friend Paris Hilton, and, any day now, Lindsay Lohan, in that category of the “We did more time than Scooter Girls”. Where am I going with this (other than probable mega-hits for mentioning so many celebrities at once)? I’m going to the United States Constitution, specifically Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, which provides:...

I first discussed this issue of the President’s “philosophical” opposition to the idea of children of the working poor receiving government subsidized health insurance in an earlier post; now, it seems, the President has convinced those humanitarians, Senators McConnell and Lott and Congressman Boehner to tag along with him and assert the proposition that, well… insuring poor children is just plain wrong, and doggone it, they’re going to stop it. Well, you have to credit them for consistency; the doctrine of “socialism for the rich super-rich, and capitalism for everybody else” has been consistently advocated from the get-go by the...

Perhaps there is… interestingly, in House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers of Michigan, the same man who now has the Henry Hyde Memorial “I can impeach you if I feel like it” chair… as Conyers announced he would schedule a vote on a contempt citation to nail the asses of Bush-toadies Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers for their delibrate and contemptuous failure to appear to answer Congressional subpoenas to testify in the U.S. Attorney conspiracy scandal. You’ll recall that the President insists that he can not only order his former subordinates not to testify despite his own failure to properly seek...

What to make of the Grey Lady’s lead story that a series of unfortunate events have caused the nation’s refineries to perform well under capacity, thereby depriving the nation of a fair amount of refined petroleum products, which, given steady or increasing demand to fill the nation’s SUVs for those long driveway rides up to the McMansions… has resulted in significant increases in the price of gasoline? Clearly, maintenance delayed is… profitable, at least in the oil patch. (No comment re: the effect of overall delayed maintenance on the nation’s overall infrastructure, such as that of a steam-pipe explosion right...