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Archive: Apr 2008

Media Alert

This evening Harper’s legal affairs contributor Scott Horton discusses the first court-martial case commenced against a civilian contractor, filed by the Marine Corps in Iraq on March 27, and the…

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Worst. President. Ever.

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,”…

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King–Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. . . I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not…

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In the Face of Justice Department Inaction, the Pentagon Moves Ahead on Contractor Accountability

Today, The Nation’s Karen Houppert reports on a gruesome rape case out of Iraq. The victim is a young American woman given the pseudonym “Lisa Smith.” It was an early…

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Mallarmé’s ‘Sea Breeze’

La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres. Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres D’être parmi l’écume inconnue et les cieux! Rien, ni…

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Balzac – The Despotism of Small Minds

Les petits esprits ont besoin de despotisme pour le jeu de leurs nerfs, comme les grandes âmes ont soif d’égalité pour l’action du cœur. Or les êtres étroits s’étendent aussi…

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NOT ME! A timeline of finger-pointing in Iraq

The New York Times today features a long report in which U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker constructs a timeline with an important lesson for the world: the failure of…

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Monica’s DOJ Makeover

As I noted in “Vote Machine,” one simmering scandal inside of the Justice Department relates to the consistent carefully schemed effort to force career DOJ employees out to make way…

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Six Questions for Noah Feldman, Author of The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

Harvard law professor Noah Feldman has written extensively on law and religion issues, and with U.S. government sponsorship he played a significant role in the preparation of the Iraqi constitution.…

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Yoo Two

Yesterday another of the long-withheld torture memoranda was released. In early 2003, beginning after the Ashcroft Justice Department dispensed advice to the Central Intelligence Agency authorizing the introduction of torture…

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Canetti – War and the First Death

Der erste Tote ist es, der alle mit dem Gefühl der Bedrohtheit ansteckt. Die Bedeutung dieses ersten Toten für die Entfachung von Kriegen kann gar nicht überschätzt werden. Machthaber, die…

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Administrative Note

Ken Silverstein is away and will return to Washington Babylon April 12.

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Readings and Remarks: The Harper’s Magazine 150th anniversary, 2000

Video from the 150th Anniversary celebration of Harper’s Magazine. Introductory remarks by Robert Polito, John R. MacArthur, and Lewis H. Lapham. Remarks by Annie Dillard, Readings by David Foster Wallace,…

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The Green Light

Yesterday the public finally got to see the full text of an infamous Department of Justice memorandum from March 2003 designed to authorize torture. I will have some more comments…

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Herrick’s Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain’d his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But…

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Lucretius – The Invocation to Venus

Quæ quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas Nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras Exoritur neque fit lætum neque amabile quicquam, Te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse Quos ego de…

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DOJ’s Magnolia Caper

As my friend John Barrett reminds me, on this day in 1940, Robert H. Jackson, perhaps the nation’s greatest attorney general, gave one of his most important speeches. Jackson had…

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More Corruption at Mukasey’s Justice Department?

Is the Justice Department the single most corrupt agency on the Washington horizon? True, when it comes to the pettiest forms of corruption, such as the corruptly influenced award of…

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Gracián on the Art of Expectations

Unos principios de crédito sirven de despertar la curiosidad, no de empeñar el objecto. Mejor sale quando la realidad excede al concepto y es más de lo que se creyó.…

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Weekly Review

Caught in the Web, 1860. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an offensive against the Mahdi Army, a large Shia militia allied with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the oil-rich southern…

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