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Archive: Aug 2007

Pushkin on the Magistrate’s Mien

Is it about the glory Of our dear motherland?–I ask in vain! Not on his lofty brow, nor in his looks May one peruse his secret thoughts; always The same…

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The Shelby-Fuller Connection

I keep learning more about the various connections in the Don Siegelman case, and here’s an interesting person we’ve barely discussed: Alabama Senator Richard Shelby (a Republican, though first elected…

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The Curious Vacuum Cleaner in Rm. 641A

The address is 611 Folsom Street in downtown San Francisco. To be more precise, it’s in a tightly guarded, access restricted room: Room 641A. There’s a loud sucking sound coming…

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Confessions of a Defense Junketeer

Yesterday I posted an item regarding writer David Axe’s reflections on the Pentagon’s blogger outreach program. I’ll follow up today with his observations about a recent Boeing-sponsored junket for journalists,…

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Turd Blossom: The Flower that Dare Not Speak Its Name

Out in West Texas, they have a name for the desert flower that crops up and blooms where the cattle have left their droppings: turd blossom. And George W. Bush…

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Poor Aster: The Expressionist’s Take on a Flower

Gottfried Benn is certainly the chief of the German expressionist poets. He was a controversial figure, a medical doctor who made his name as a man of letters, and as…

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Gottfried Benn’s ‘Little Aster’

A drowned driver of a beer truck was dumped onto the table Someone had stuck a dark-pale lilac-colored aster Between his teeth I cut out the tongue and gums With…

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Proust on the Intellect and the Past

Every day I place less value in intellect. Every day I see more clearly that if the writer is to repossess himself of some part of his old impressions, which…

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Weekly Review

In the midst of a brief thunderstorm that transfixed the New York City subway system and killed one motorist, a tornado formed over the Atlantic Ocean, grazed the north coast…

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Karl Rove’s Unfinished Business (the Trail Leads, Yet Again, to Alabama)

Rove and Bush delivered tearful farewells on the White House lawn this morning. It was an emotional experience. But I’m still counting on this evening’s Daily Show to deliver a…

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The Failed Presidency of Karl Rove

Under the heading of unplanned ironies, consider the picture of Karl Rove—the man at the center of a Washington corruption storm coming out of the misuse of the Department of…

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Dissent from the Pentagon’s Blogger Roundtables: David Axe has second thoughts about DoD effort

Last month, I wrote about (1 2 3) the Pentagon’s “Surrogates” program, which works with selected military analysts, bloggers, former defense officials, opinion-makers, and others who are almost all highly…

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The Departure of Karl Rove

The Monday morning bombshell is Karl Rove’s announcement that he will shortly leave the service of President Bush. Here’s the AP account: Karl Rove, President Bush’s close friend and chief…

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A Curious Incident at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, whose London Review of Books article on “the Israel Lobby” unleashed a major storm in the United States, have worked their article into a…

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Diogenes Laërtius on the Philosopher in Exile

And it happened that someone came to speak with reproach about the fact that he had been exiled. But Diogenes replied abruptly, saying: “No, you dense fellow, that is how…

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Dubya’s Political Sunday School

It may be owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch, but the Times (London) is still able to report in a free way about politics in the United States that is…

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YouTube of the Day

Last winter, making arrangements for a law of armed conflict conference I was putting together with some friends from West Point and Princeton, I had a lunch with one of…

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The O’Hanlon/Pollack Bamboozlement

I have been following with some interest the outcome of the trip that Michael O’Hanlon, Ken Pollack and Anthony Cordesman made to Iraq. It generated an op-ed by O’Hanlon and…

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Assessing the Mess in Afghanistan

For the last year, the thinking in many well-informed circles among counterterrorism experts has been that Iraq was an incurable disaster. The internal contradictions and splits within the country were…

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Race to the Top of the World!

McKenzie Funk, “Cold Rush: The Coming Fight for the Melting North,” Harper’s, Sept. 2007 Over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself up north of the forty-fourth parallel several…

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More Leaked Secrets by G.O.P. Leaders…

Over at ABC News, Justin Rood reports that in addition to the leaks from the White House to back Gonzales, from Gonzales and from Minority Leader Boehner, now we have…

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A Gonzales Weekend Round-Up

Fredo’s Awesome Baghdad Adventure Alberto Gonzales has been the Bush Administration’s whipping boy for the last half year now. The Administration offers him up with regularity to absorb blows that…

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Unaccountable Contractors

Hollywood gives us James Bond as the man with a license to kill. However, the Bush Administration has fashioned a pretty broad exemption for security contractors in Iraq. As the…

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Luther on the Lawyer’s Calling

The study of law is dirty and mercenary because its ultimate object is money; one studies law neither for delight nor simply for the knowledge of things. Thus a lawyer…

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The Michael Gerson Story

Matthew Scully has a significant piece in the September Atlantic entitled “Present at the Creation,” which is essentially an accounting of the meteoric rise of Michael Gerson as a print…

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The Life of a Paqo

Sometimes inspirational pieces can be found in strange corners. From anthropologist Edgardo Krebs, a powerful tribute published in today’s Washington Post to a Quechua-speaking shaman (though as he teaches us,…

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Gryphius, or the Transitory Nature of Humanity

I have just posted original translations of two poems by the great Silesian Baroque poet Andreas Gryphius. Last week when I put up my translation of Brentano’s Springtime Cry from…

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Two Poems by Andreas Gryphius

Human Misery What indeed are men! A dwelling place for grim pains, A ball of false fortune, a will-o’-the-wisp of their times, A stage of bitter fear, set with sharp…

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