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

Archive: Nov 2007

DOJ Watch

Bush’s Recount Counsel Blasts Politicization of U.S. Attorneys These days it’s not unusual for prominent lawyers around the country to blast the Bush Administration over its deeply entrenched politicization of…

Read more

Does Bush Have a Pakistan Policy?

As the last year of his presidency starts, Bush’s foreign policy is in total collapse. It begs the question in fact: does this president have a foreign policy? His second…

Read more

Burke on Why Men of Good Will Must Unite

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with…

Read more

Marine Lawyer Gagged by Pentagon

Today a House Judiciary Subcommittee is holding hearings on torture—excuse me, highly coersive interrogation techniques—and how it affects potential trials before the Military Commissions. Marine Lieutenant Colonel V. Stuart Couch…

Read more

When it Comes to Hillary, People Have No Sense of Huma

Turns out everything–and I mean everything–you’ve heard about Hillary is true. I received a stream of emails in reply to my item yesterday about rumors of an affair between Hillary…

Read more

Change or Continuity for Turkmenistan?

Mecca, New York and now Brussels – Turkmenistan’s new president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is on an unprecedented (for Turkmenistan) world tour to get to know the movers and shakers in the…

Read more

Hughes’s ‘Let America Be America Again’

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.…

Read more

Durkheim on Suicide

The anarchist, the esthete, the mystic, the revolutionary socialist, even if they do not despair of the future, agree with the pessimist in the same sentiment of hatred and disgust…

Read more

Not Just Republicans Spreading Rumors About Hillary’s Lesbian Affair

It’s not just Republicans who play rough in South Carolina. Rumors have been circulating in the Palmetto State, and elsewhere, that Hillary Clinton is having a lesbian affair. Her alleged…

Read more

The Washington Post and the “Freedom Agenda”

Those ever-observant Washington Post editorial writers have spotted the demise of President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” in Pakistan. In an editorial yesterday, the Post bewailed President Pervez Musharraf’s suspension…

Read more

Six Questions for Steve LeVine, Author of The Oil and the Glory

No Comment, which has been reporting from Central Asia for most of the last week, has taken a close look at Steve LeVine’s terrific new book The Oil and The…

Read more

DOJ Torture Memo # 6 Identified

I recently examined how the Bush Justice Department was developing a “Culture of Torture,” that is, the Bush Administration’s addiction to torture has become its defining element. Opposition to torture…

Read more

Montaigne on the World of Books

Ces deux commerces sont fortuites et despendans d’autruy. L’un est ennuyeux par sa rareté; l’autre se flestrit avec l’aage; ainsin ils n’eussent pas assez prouveu au besoing de ma vie.…

Read more

Bush’s Musharraf Envy

Yesterday, President Bush spoke publicly for the first time about General Musharraf’s coup d’état in Pakistan. His remarks and his conduct overall make for a curious contrast with his recent…

Read more

The Justice Department’s Culture of Torture

On Friday, Nov. 2, ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson carried a story with a series of stunning accusations. Jan Crawford Greenburg provided a report that cleared up a long-standing…

Read more

Baudelaire’s ‘The Balcony’

Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses, Ô toi, tous mes plaisirs! ô toi, tous mes devoirs! Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses, La douceur du foyer et le charme…

Read more

Baudelaire on the Role of Imagination

C’est l’imagination qui a enseigné à l’homme le sens moral de la couleur, du contour, du son et du parfum. Elle a créé, au commencement du monde, l’analogie et la…

Read more

Weekly Review

The Cloaca Maxima, 1872 Friday marked Mexico‘s Day of the Dead, which was celebrated as hundreds of thousands of people attempted to flee the flooded state of Tabasco by boat,…

Read more

Media Alert

As the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be America’s next attorney general comes closer to a vote, opposition has flared over the issue of waterboarding and a handful of other…

Read more

The Bellinger-Sands Debate

When was the last time that the American secretary of state’s senior legal adviser was an object of near-universal ridicule in the international legal community? In my lifetime, only once:…

Read more

Happy Counterterrorism Day

Remember, remember the fifth of November, The gunpowder, treason and plot, I know of no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent…

Read more

‘We Do Not Torture’: The Lies Started in 1967

New York Times, “Branding Rite Laid to Yale University,” Nov. 8, 1967 NEW HAVEN, Nov. 7–A Yale fraternity accused by the student newspaper of burning its initiates with a brand…

Read more

Javert’s Amazing Pirouettes

In the last two weeks, we’ve learned that Javert obviously missed his calling. He’s a prosecutor to outward appearances. But observe his wild gyrations. He spins first one way, and…

Read more

Milton on Liberty’s Sharp and Double Edge

Thus they who of late were extolled as our greatest deliverers, and had the people wholly at their devotion, by so discharging their trust as we see, did not only…

Read more

DOJ and Contractor Fraud

Back on June 29, I sat through some hearings before the House Judiciary Committee in which plaintiff’s counsel in a series of qui tam contract fraud suits described their futile…

Read more

Media Alert

Harper’s legal affairs contributor Scott Horton will appear today on Air America’s Sam Seder Show to discuss the status of the Mukasey nomination and the issues raised by the nominee’s…

Read more

The JAGs Set the Record Straight

Michael Mukasey in his testimony and written responses admits of much uncertainty as to whether waterboarding is illegal. This is scandalous. There is no issue on the subject. In connection…

Read more

Tortured Editorials

I’ll go back to Rick Hertzberg’s devastating words on the Washington Post’s editorial page: “pathetic. Really pathetic.” This past week, straining for something that could, in the Washington environment at…

Read more

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

Debug