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Archive: Aug 2007

Weekly Review

Jittery global markets brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis led the Federal Reserve to cut its discount rate on loans to banks by half a percentage point.AP via ForbesCiting…

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Media Alert

Scott Horton will be discussing legal affairs developments in Washington, with a focus on issues surrounding Alberto Gonzales, the Department of Justice, the case of former Alabama Governor Don E.…

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A Change in the Offing on Iraq?

Over the weekend, I’ve heard from several different sources very close to the Bush Administration about the high-level discussions over the September 15 report on Iraq (usually referred to in…

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Soldiers Slam Pliant Media

A group of soldiers and noncommissioned officers from the 82nd Airborne serving in Iraq published an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times in which they sharply criticized American press coverage…

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The FISA Bamboozlement, Continued

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau offer some significant further analysis of the recent Administration-sponsored amendment of the FISA statute in the New York Times.. Electronic surveillance, they note, was just…

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Coffee and Civilization

Honoré de Balzac fueled his writings and shortened his life with a fanatical addiction to coffee. He cranked out la comédie humaine in all-night sessions during which he drank as…

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Balzac on the Dangers of Drinking Too Much Coffee

The state coffee puts one in when it is drunk on an empty stomach under these magisterial conditions produces a kind of vivacity that looks like anger: one’s voice rises,…

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Jose Padilla and the Unfinished Business of Justice

One of the clearest lessons put to posterity by the writers of classical antiquity is this: humankind constructs the state for its security and happiness, but most importantly, for the…

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Kant on the Primacy of Human Rights

Genuine politics cannot risk a step without first having demonstrated its fidelity to morality, and even though politics may justly be called a difficult art, its combination with morality is…

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Criminality, Surveillance and the State Secrets Fraud

Congratulations to the editors of Newday, who have seen through the con artistry played by the Gonzales Justice Department, with remarkable success so far, on the American judiciary. In an…

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Counting Fredo’s Whoppers

He just keeps serving them up. It reflects a new vision of the function of the office of Attorney General. Not as the nation’s chief law enforcement office, as a…

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Sévigné on the Nature of Life

. . . this life is a perpetual chequer-work of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When in possession of what we desire, we are only so much the nearer…

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The FISA Court Strikes Again

More important evidence of judicial backbone this afternoon. In response to a motion by the ACLU challenging the Bush Administration’s insistence on keeping all dealings surrounding the FISA Court in…

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Benjamin Barber: Qaddafi’s Riefenstahl

Marc Lynch has brought to my attention Benjamin Barber’s astonishing op-ed in the Washington Post about Libya and Colonel Qaddafi. Barber, the author of “Jihad vs. McWorld,” has found a…

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Rudy’s Foreign Policy

It’s hard to imagine that as Labor Day 2007 approaches, we’re so deep into the presidential election process—already a week past the G.O.P.’s Iowa straw poll, for instance. One of…

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Donne’s Poem of Love… and Torture

Love’s Exchange Donne’s poetry isn’t so easy to master. His near contemporary Ben Jonson and his later advocate William Hazlitt both seem to have formed the same view, namely that…

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Two Poems by John Donne

Love’s Exchange Love, any devil else but you Would for a given soul give something too. At court your fellows every day Give th’ art of rhyming, huntsmanship, or play,…

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Donne on the Necessity of Laughter

Ride, si sapis, ô puella ride; If thou beest wise, laugh: for since the powers of discourse and Reason, and laughter bee equally proper vnto Man onely, why shall not…

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The Paranoid Style in American Politics

It’s about us every day, but some days it is stronger than others. And today it is stunning. Consider these examples: In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, the…

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A Balancing Act at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs

If you haven’t heard, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has canceled a talk scheduled for next month by Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, co-authors of the now-famous study…

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Tales from Stasiland: Dangerous Blogs!

A well-known blogger on Middle Eastern affairs, Matthew Good, reports on his latest Department of Homeland Security reception on returning home at the Detroit Metro Airport following a long stay…

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Liberate General Petraeus

Is General Petraeus being held captive in the famous man-sized safe that resides in Dick Cheney’s office? The Bush Administration ploughed ahead with its ramp-up of forces in Iraq over…

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This Week in Justice: a Round-Up

Gonzales travels to Baghdad and suddenly a series of suicide bombings produce up to 500 casualties on a single day. The Army announces that the suicide rate among U.S. soldiers…

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Irving on the Mutability of Literature

There rise authors now and then who seem proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic…

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John Donne and the Outlawing of Torture

Recently I asked a clerical friend whether, considering the persistence of torture as a moral issue, he had thought of giving a sermon on the subject? He looked very uncomfortable…

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EPIC: Biometric Identification in Iraq Could Become a Tool for Ethnic Cleansing

I recently spoke with Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC, who told me about a story that has not received enough attention. It involves the…

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John Donne: Against the Abomination of Torture

Preached on April 17, 1625, on Easter Sunday, to the Congregation at St Paul’s Cathedral in London They therefore oppose God in his purpose of dignifying the body of man,…

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