Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access

Archive: Oct 2007

The Justice Department Raises a Rebel Yell: The Strange Prosecution of Charles Walker

Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas gained press coverage and air time in connection with his new book. Its early chapters recount the bitter racism that Thomas faced as a Black man…

Read more

Mme. de Staël on Wit

Montesquieu dit que l’esprit consiste à connaître la resemblance des choses diverses et la difference des choses semblables. S’il pouvait exister une théorie qui apprît à devenir un homme d’esprit,…

Read more

Former AG Thornburgh Says Prosecution Was Political

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee will be holding hearings on politics and the Bush Justice Department. The focus will be on a series of cases in which it is…

Read more

Diego Garcia and the Mukasey Nomination

Diego Garcia is not a person. It’s a coral atoll located in the South Indian Ocean. And for some time now there have been stories murmured about what the CIA…

Read more

Homeland Security, Death Cab for Cutie, Fuzzy Llamas, and the Square Root of Stupidity

At times it’s hard to fathom exactly how stupid our nation has become. And then there’s this: though only reported thus far by MTV News, the U.S. Department of Homeland…

Read more

Nietzsche’s Cosmos

In some remote corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever animals invented Recognition. That was the most arrogant…

Read more

Media Alert

President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, former Judge Michael B. Mukasey, completes his second day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon. On this evening’s The NewsHour with…

Read more

For Justice: A Light at the End of the Tunnel?

The OPR Hit Squad In the past couple of months I have examined four cases handled by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Through some time in 2002, OPR…

Read more

A Rumination on the ‘Laziest Son’

If we had to craft a list of the ten greatest poets of human history, then certainly this thirteenth-century Muslim theologian, who began his life in modern day Afghanistan and…

Read more

Rumi’s ‘Laziest Son’

A man on his deathbed left instructions For dividing up his goods among his three sons. He had devoted his entire spirit to those sons. They stood like cypress trees…

Read more

Bonker’s for APCO

As I reported here yesterday, the lobbying firm APCO was well-represented at Congressional hearings concerning Kazakhstan’s bid to chair the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). A…

Read more

FISA, the Next Round

Confusion abounds about the actual workings of FISA, the stop-gap measure passed recently and the longer term measures now put forward by the Administration and various Democratic sponsors. A large…

Read more

Six Questions for Will Folks on South Carolina Politics and Dirty Tricks

Will Folks is president of Viewpolitik, LLC, a political consulting firm based in Columbia, South Carolina. He is also the founding editor of FITSNews.com, a widely-read political blog. Folks previously…

Read more

Gandhi-ji’s Seven Blunders

In human society, all violence can be traced back to these seven recurrent blunders: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship…

Read more

APCO, Paragon of Ethics, Representing Kazakh Regime: Can Turkmenistan be far behind?

Update Thursday, October 25, 2007: This story was correct in identifying APCO as Kazakhstan’s lobbying firm, and the firm did dispatch several lobbyists to the hearings. But I have no…

Read more

2003 Affidavit Raises More Serious Questions About Siegelman Judge

I have received a copy of an affidavit (8.7Mb PDF) filed by a Missouri attorney in 2003 which details a number of charges of unethical and criminal conduct against Judge…

Read more

Media Alert

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will start its hearings on the President’s nomination of Michael B. Mukasey to serve as attorney general. Harper’s magazine legal affairs contributor Scott Horton…

Read more

Stevens’s ‘After the Final No’

The Well Dressed Man With A Beard After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this…

Read more

Rod Shealy: South Carolina’s shrewdest political consultant?

My piece in the November issue of Harper’s, already on newsstands, takes a look at the Republican presidential race in South Carolina, focusing on the role of Mitt Romney’s handlers…

Read more

Aristotle on the Phony Religiocity of Tyrants

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider God-fearing and pious. On the…

Read more

Weekly Review

Turkey shelled the village of Dashta Takh in Iraqi Kurdistan and declared plans to send its ground troops to attack outposts of the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north of…

Read more

Speaking Truth to Torturers, Cont’d

Last night I listened to a group of retired generals and admirals speak very movingly of their commitment to oppose the Bush Administration’s torture policies. One of them, General Fred…

Read more

Media Alert

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee starts hearings on the president’s nomination of Michael Mukasey to serve as Attorney General. Harper’s legal affairs contributor Scott Horton will comment on the…

Read more

Media Alert

Ken Silverstein will take part in a panel discussion today on the KCRW radio program To the Point, hosted by Warren Olney. The topic will be the CIA’s investigation of…

Read more

Jaspers on Faith and Globalization

Today we are searching for the common ground upon which humans of all origins and faiths can meaningfully meet to contemplate the world, ready to acquire their own history from…

Read more

Six Questions for Bob Drogin on Curveball and the Iraq War

Bob Drogin is the author of the newly released book Curveball, the code name for the Iraqi defector whose pre-war claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged mobile germ-warfare labs were seized…

Read more

Searching for Meaning in the ‘B’ham News’

A friend down in Alabama describes a visit from a young local reporter from the Associated Press who proceeded to work his way into the conversation by announcing that “of…

Read more

Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug