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Archive: Dec 2007

Paz – ‘Motion/Movimiento’

Si tú eres la yegua de ámbar yo soy el camino de sangre Si tú eres la primer nevada yo soy el que enciende el brasero del alba Si tú…

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Paz: A Poet Lost in Time

Me sentí, literalmente, desalojado del presente. Desde entonces el tiempo comenzó a fracturarse más y más. Y el espacio, los espacios. La experiencia se repitió una y otra vez. Una…

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Washington Irving’s Legend of the Arabian Astrologer

Washington Irving, The Alhambra (1832) in: Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveller, The Alhambra, p. 849 (Library of America ed. 1991) There are some writers whose works seem to serve…

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Washington Post: Four Government Probes of Iraq Special Inspector

Last May, I filed a story saying that Stuart Bowen Jr., the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), was under investigation himself. Bowen is charged with uncovering misspending…

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Siegelman Update

For those of you who missed last night’s segment on MSNBC with Dan Abrams, here it is. As Abrams said, the prosecutors have had a pass on their completely outrageous…

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Xenophon on the Use of Force

Compulsion is not the method of him who makes wisdom his study, but of him who wields power untempered by reflection. Once more: the man who ventures on violence needs…

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The Best Justice Money Can Buy

Alabama Governor Bob Riley has announced that he will not ask the Alabama Supreme Court to reconsider its shocking decision to throw out a $3.6 billion jury award that the…

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A Strong President Says No to Torture

The current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sends his press spokeswoman, Dana Perino, out to handle the questions. “Tell us what the president knows about the waterboarding tapes” demand the…

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From Canto IV of Lord Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its…

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Hazlitt on Byron, the Slaves of Power and the Forces of Liberty

Why then should Lord Byron force the comparison between the modern and the ancient hero? It is because the slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because…

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Alert to Charities and Political Campaigns: Watch Out for CDG

Presidential campaigns raise tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast pool of donors. Campaigns are supposed to vet contributors but the endless flow of checks makes…

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Watch Out for Left Hook: Six Questions for Oregon Senatorial Candidate Steve Novick

One of the more unconventional races in the country this year may pit Democratic challenger Steve Novick against a distinguished Republican incumbent, Gordon Smith, for a U.S. Senate seat in…

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Media Alert

Harper’s legal affairs contributor Scott Horton and Alabama Congressman Artur Davis will discuss the politically motivated prosecution and conviction of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman on MSNBC’s “Live with…

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Report from the Recording Angel

We have come to the season of angels. Suddenly they are everywhere: standing in front yards, department store windows, draped around streetlights, gazing from cards in the mail and keeping…

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Kérenyi on Words and Thought

The interdependence of thought and speech makes it clear that languages are not so much a means of expressing truth that has already been established, but are a means of…

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Lott’s Lament

The town square of Oxford, Mississippi is an American literary landmark. Readers of William Faulkner know its profile instinctively: an array of storefronts, the county courthouse, and a town green…

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Undermining Military Justice

It’s a cliché to say that “military justice is to justice as military music is to music.” It’s also far from fair to the American military. Over the last fifty…

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Blok’s ‘Night. City Calmed Down’

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Sakharov on Humanity’s Challenge

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Weekly Review

Caught in the Web, 1860. A new National Intelligence Estimate by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran ended its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, in contrast to…

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Bush League Justice

DOJ Confused: Is Rape Really a Crime? Another angle of the contractor immunity phenomenon is exhibited in a report carried by ABC’s chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross this evening. A…

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What Difference Would It Make?

The Department of Justice and the CIA are undertaking a “preliminary investigation” to determine whether a more formal probe of the destruction of the two tapes is appropriate. The effort…

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Media Alert

Harper’s contributor Scott Horton appears today on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! to discuss issues surrounding Blackwater and the spreading controversy concerning the CIA’s destruction of at least two tapes showing…

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de Tocqueville on the War in Algeria

Pour ma part, j’ai rapporté d’Afrique la notion affligeante qu’en ce moment nous faisons la guerre d’une manière beaucoup plus barbare que les Arabes eux-mêmes. C’est, quant a présent, de…

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The President-Tyrant

The irreplaceable Fritz Stern reminds us that as a democracy with two-hundred thirty years of experience, America is better situated than most to weather the storms of a wannabe tyrant.…

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Rumi’s ‘The Snake-Catcher’s Tale’

Listen to this, and hear the mystery inside: A snake-catcher went into the mountains to find a snake. He wanted a friendly pet, and one that would amaze audiances, but…

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Jefferson on the Tyrannical President

Let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President, and the President of our choice…

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