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Archive: Jul 2008

Corruption in Kazakhstan? My last illusions are shattered

The Wall Street Journal has been running a terrific series of articles about corruption and human rights abuses in Kazakhstan, which the newspaper describes as “a strategic U.S. friend and…

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Weekly Review

Barack Obama began his week-long foreign tour in Afghanistan, where he met with President Hamid Karzai, and continued on to Iraq. There, he flew in a helicopter to the Green…

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The Discharge From a Deeper Wound

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” I wrote a few years ago, “everyone hates translations. The evidence is everywhere in the history of literature:” Cervantes wrote that reading a translation was “like…

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The Misdirection

Last week the House Judiciary Committee conducted two further hearings into the formulation of Bush Administration torture policy. In the second, John Ashcroft was questioned and some significant progress was…

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Vital Strategic Debate at Air Force: What color leather for our comfort capsules?

From the Project on Government Oversight (POGO): While elements of the Air Force brass were bickering about color coordination for their new comfort capsules, troops have sat for hours on…

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Congress and Menthols

From a reader: “This might be the sickest, slickest thing to come out of Congress since the Dems took over, and, I think, something that Henry Waxman is losing a…

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Gary Condit: All I did was lie about my affair with a murdered woman and the media won’t leave me alone

The Washington Post is running a 12-part series on the unsolved 2001 murder of Chandra Levy. Then-Congressman Gary Condit became a suspect in the case, in part because after she…

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Waterboarding and the Waverly Inn

Leon Wieseltier on Hitchens and waterboarding: Just some weeks ago Christopher Hitchens and his camera-ready conscience went and got themselves waterboarded for the pages of Vanity Fair, which are anyway…

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Hans Sachs’s Schlaraffenland

Ein gegent heißt schlauraffenlant, den faulen leuten wol bekant, das ligt drei meil hinter weihnachten, und welcher darein wölle trachten, der muß sich großer ding vermeßen und durch ein berg…

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Olympic Sponsors “Cheer for China”:

In an interview here about a week ago, Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch criticized the twelve corporate “super-sponsors” of the Beijing Olympics, companies that include McDonald’s, Coke, and GE.…

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Will Obama Speak Out for Constituent’s Kids? Or Will Choreography Prevail on Foreign Trip?

For months an Illinois woman, Colleen Davis Bargouthi, has been petitioning Barack Obama’s campaign and Senate offices to help her four American-born daughters, who, she says, are being held incommunicado…

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Cusanus’s Human Microcosm

Maximo autem, cui minimum coincidit, convenit ita unum amplecti, quod et aliud non dimittat, sed simul omnia. Quapropter natura media, quæ est medium connexionis inferioris et superioris, est solum illa,…

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Ukrainian Press Calls Conference Attended by Karl Rove “Nauseating”

As I noted earlier today, Karl Rove can’t be bothered to honor a congressional subpoena, but he’s got time to fly off to Yalta to appear at a panel sponsored…

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Sweet Dreams: Official Predicts “Chaos” and “Panic” if Washington, D.C., Attacked

From Jeff Stein at CQ: Darrell Darnell, director of the District of Columbia’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, says there would be “a lot of panic, a lot of…

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Weekend Read: “The other side”

It’s always exciting when a novel by a writer of whom one hasn’t heard appears and is said to be terrific. Receiving the news, we readers are granted a few…

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Rove, Yalta, and Contempt of Congress

Karl Rove does not have the time or inclination to testify before Congress but he did manage to fly off to the Ukraine last week to appear as a panelist…

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Wolcott: “The raven caw of Laura Ingraham’s voice”

From James Wolcott at Vanity Fair: The raven caw of Laura Ingraham’s voice on the radio has never been one of nature’s nobler mating calls, and her on-air personality has…

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Russian and Serb Interests Paid for Congressman Weldon’s Family Vacation to Europe

Back in January of 2007, the House Ethics Committee (“Press 1 if you are a member of Congress covering up a criminal offense. Press 2 if…”) released a statement saying…

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Charges Against Two SIGIR Employees Dropped

More than a year ago I reported on an ongoing investigation into two top employees at the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Stuart Bowen Jr. and Ginger…

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Media Alert

Today on Warren Olney’s “To the Point,” Jane Mayer appears to discuss her new book, The Dark Side, and Harper’s legal affairs writer Scott Horton offers comments, together with Cliff…

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The Daily Show on the New Yorker Cover

Brilliant dissection of the media reaction to the New Yorker cover: Via Charles Kaiser at Radar. Yes, out of context, Wolf Blitzer just might be a Hitler-lover.

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Resurrection Is Rare

If pressed to offer an account of oneself in prose, how might one best go about presenting not merely a coherent personal narrative but an insightful one? And going further…

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Video from Guantánamo: Interrogation of Canadian teenager

From The Guardian: The first footage showing an interrogation at Guantánamo Bay was released today by the lawyers of Omar Khadr, a Canadian teenager detained by US forces. The video…

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Where is the Curt Weldon Investigation Heading?

Plea deal with lobbyist friend likely imminent… The federal investigation into former Congressman Curt Weldon has been going on for nearly two years now. The original investigation stemmed from an…

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That New Yorker Cover

Many readers disliked yesterday’s item “WhineOn.org,” about the hysteria over The New Yorker‘s cover illustration on Barack and Michelle Obama. Indeed, the item generated more negative mail than an earlier…

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Lobbyist-arranged Op-eds?

Following up on that Sunday Times of London story about its sting on lobbyist Stephen Payne, regarding the former administration official caught seeking to sell access to the White House,…

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Weekly Review

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision seized the IndyMac Bank of California, worth an estimated 32 billion dollars, after the bank’s closure in the wake of mortgage industry collapse,AFPand the…

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