The first nation to extend formal diplomatic recognition to the fledgling young United States was not France, or Prussia or any other Christian power of Europe. It was the Muslim…
Sy Hersh published a must-read story in the New Yorker over the weekend about the experience of Major General Antonio Taguba. The story prompts many questions, and in particular it…
In the Framers’ Constitution, after Congress passes a law and sends it to the President for signature, the president has the right either to sign the bill into law, or…
An American cattleman. President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian unity government and declared a state of emergency after masked Hamas gunmen seized control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas looters broke…
Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 3PM EST, I will appear on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to talk about the “dictator lobby” with a representative of the D.C. lobbying…
The White House’s claims concerning the email-habits of Karl Rove and his key associates just get curiouser and curiouser. First we learned that Rove and Company used a large volume…
As the climate in Washington, D.C. descends into the torrid, who can blame Nino Scalia for accepting an invitation that involves travel far to the North? It seems the nation’s…
I’m puzzled sometimes about how the vacuous chattering class of commentators form their political views. Do they come prepackaged and delivered by K Street lobbyists? A good example might be…
The first U.S. proconsul in Iraq was, of course, not Jerry Bremer, but General Jay Garner. Today’s Guardian has an account of testimony and an interview he gave over the…
The big news down in South America for the last month has been the testimony of paramilitary leaders in Colombia. The country has been plagued for more than a decade…
The Los Angeles Times reports that in the wake of disclosures of the political manipulation of prosecutions around the country that underlies the U.S. attorneys scandal, defendants in many cases…
Fifty-three senators have expressed no confidence in his ability to direct the Department of Justice. But the man has a mission. And that is to insure that the Department of…
I agree with you in my sentiments of the state of our Nation since this change; I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your…
Mark Perry is a military, intelligence and foreign affairs analyst and the co-director of Conflicts Forum, a private group that calls for increased dialogue between Western countries and Islamic movements…
There is a case south of the Mason-Dixon line that resembles the Thompson case in some respects, except that the prosecutorial misconduct appears if anything more serious and more pervasive.…
In the frenzied days of the 2006 midterm election, U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic, in hot water with Karl Rove for “not doing enough” to bolster the Republic election effort, brought…
Today’s Independent on Sunday is on the stands in Britain with high-profile coverage of a growing scandal relating to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners in and around Basra, with…
There’s no keener observer of the situation in Pakistan than Lahore-based Ahmed Rashid. In a piece in the Sunday Washington Post, Rashid says that America’s arrangement with Musharraf has been…
A few weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates addressed the graduating class of Naval midshipmen at Annapolis. He offered an extraordinary message: As officers, you will have a responsibility…
Seymour Hersh furthers his remarkable coverage of the Abu Ghraib story in next week’s New Yorker. He gives us a portrait of Major General Antonio Taguba, whose report on detainee…
In watching the Republican debates, I have generally marveled over the performance of one participant: John McCain. Fact is, I disagree with McCain about a lot of things – too…
Jacob Burckhardt, the great cultural historian of the late nineteenth century, tracked the evolution of the Italian city-state culture from the Late Middle Ages into the Renaissance. It was, he…
It’s Friday after the close for the evening news, just the time every week when we sit and wait for the latest carefully shelved piece of bad news from Bushland…
For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the Earth’s glory, believes that in each person is the…
Associated Press quotes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace in his first remarks following Secretary Gates’s announcement of his pending replacement on June 8: Gen. Peter…
I just finished reading the Jeff Gerth-Don Van Natta book on Hillary Clinton entitled Her Way and relived the tumultuous days of the Whitewater investigation through it. One thing that…
It appears there’s some confusion about yesterday’s story, so let me clear things up: I don’t think that the CIA is bribing Iraqi parliamentarians to vote the U.S. out of…
There is a subgenre of English travel literature that features a generally silent amanuensis recording the peregrinations of a Great One. This starts, I think, with Boswell’s wonderful Journal of…
Before there were “enhanced interrogation techniques,” there was verschärfte Vernehmung, (which means “enhanced interrogation techniques”) developed by the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst in 1937 and subject to a series of…
America under George Bush embarked upon a remarkably assertive foreign policy placing heavy reliance on the use of force of arms and downplaying diplomacy. As a presidential candidate in 2000,…