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Archive: Jul 2007

The Curious Case of the Dog That Did Not Bark

As literature’s most famous private detective, Sherlock Holmes, reminds us in the Silver Blaze, in evaluating a complex pattern of facts, we must consider not only the established facts but…

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Hugo on the Ideal

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost…

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Sir Henry Durand and the Resurgence of Al Qaeda

Today U.S. intelligence says that Al Qaeda has rebuilt itself to roughly the same level of capabilities it had before its attack on September 11, 2001—a shocking comment on the…

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Montesquieu on Securing Liberty

Political liberty of the individual citizen is that tranquility of spirit which possesses its own assurance; and to secure that liberty, it is essential that the government permit no citizen…

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John McCain Makes His Own Laws

I just received an interesting email from a reader of this blog, who prefers to remain anonymous, and who writes: Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article about John McCain…

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Noel Hillman and the Siegelman Case

Noel Hillman (photo) is a federal judge in Camden, New Jersey appointed to the court by President Bush in the spring of 2006. He gathered the support of New Jersey’s…

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Siegelman in the Iron Mask

Tomorrow we observe the storming of the Bastille in Paris, which marked the beginning of the French Revolution. It’s a fitting time to remember the most famous of all the…

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A Tyrant’s Justice

The Democratic presidential candidates addressed the NAACP yesterday. And one of them actually had something very important to say. It was Barack Obama: Obama derided President Bush’s commutation of former…

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The Call of Freedom

A little more than thirty years ago, I went to a school run by the military. It was a suffocating place. The school stood within the distance of a rifle…

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A Southern Lady

Lady Bird Johnson died, and predictably the papers are filled with obituaries talking about her contribution to the esthetics of America’s roadways. This is predictably shallow. I was very moved…

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Called to Account

Bush came to office in 2001 with a promise of accountability. He would, he promised, restore dignity and accountability to the Oval Office. But the hallmark of his Government has…

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Between Two Revolutions

George W. Bush took America to war with Iraq. When France, and most of the rest of Europe, said “do as you like, but we’re not going with you,” Bush…

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Beaumarchais’s Gift

Sirs, I feel compelled to advise you that the vessel l’Amphitrite, with a displacement of 400 tonnes, will sail with the first good winds for the first port in the…

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Journalism Ethics: A wrap-up

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has faithfully parroted the talking points of the two lobbying firms I embarrassed in this month’s Harper’s, but APCO and Cassidy & Associates have…

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Six Questions for Seth Hettena on the Brent Wilkes Trials

Seth Hettena spent nine years with the Associated Press, where he broke stories about a terrorist suspect who was tortured to death by the CIA, revealed photos of Navy SEALs…

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Swearing an Oath to the Leader

The Bush White House’s scorched earth policy in battling Congressional inquiry into the U.S. attorney’s scandal unfolded a bit further today, with two major developments. First, Bush’s former political director,…

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Sakharov on Intellectual Freedom

Intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a…

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Dorrance Smith’s Department of Propaganda: Meet the American “Baghdad Bob”

Dorrance Smith, a former ABC News producer, has been close to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld since the Ford Administration. Which probably explains why the Bush administration picked him to…

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Update on Siegelman

More DOJ Malicious Mischief Congress prepares for hearings which will look into the White House-directed vendetta that resulted in the prosecution and conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, the…

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The New Lysenkoism

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was Joseph Stalin’s favorite scientist. He rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of a new pseudo-science of hybridization which had strong political appeal to Stalin and his leadership…

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A New Counter-Terrorism Regime

If pressed to pick the more intellectually honest and articulate figures in the current debate surrounding the national security state in America, two of the first names I would most…

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A Knight’s Quest for Humanity

Shota Rustaveli, Vephkhistqaosani (The Knight in Panther’s Skin) (ca. 1190)(K. Vivian transl. 1977) On the rim of the Biblical world, in the mountains of Eastern Anatolia to the northwest of…

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Georgia Provides Troops for Iraq; Gets a Free Pass on Human Rights?

Guess which Eastern European country will soon have the third largest military force in Iraq? That same country is strongly pro-NATO and has on retainer a Washington lobbyist who was…

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A Credibility Chasm

The Bush White House has always had an obsession with direct control over the media flow from Baghdad. An important part of the terrible distortion that emanated from Baghdad came…

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Further Gonzales Perjury Exposed

It seems increasingly that Alberto Gonzales’s attitude towards testimony before Congress entails spreading official truths that happen to be lies. He seems indifferent to the fact that he’s sworn in…

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Rustaveli on Love and Friendship

No one of understanding can abandon a friend who is dear to him. I venture to recall to you the saying of Plato, that lying and duplicity are injurious to…

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Weekly Review

At least 150 Iraqis were killed by a truck bomb in northern Iraq in possibly the deadliest bombing since the United States invaded in 2003, and it was reported that,…

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