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Archive: 2008

English Judge Says Invasion of Iraq by U.S. and U.K. Unlawful

Lord Bingham, one of the English-speaking world’s most famous judges, just went into retirement, and used the occasion of his first public speech to lambast the Bush and Blair Administrations…

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AP: Cheney and Gonzales Indicted for Prisoner Abuse

No this is not a hoax. The indictment was handed down by a South Texas grand jury in Willacy County, the scene of some recent bizarre federal prison projects which…

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AP: Obama Will Not Prosecute War Crimes

What do journalists do when they have no news to report? They focus on speculation about what might happen. Most of the speculation in transition time focuses on candidates in…

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Weekly Review

Doctors in Berlin announced that they had cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a donor naturally resistant to the virus; other researchers cautioned…

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The Great Oz Predicts

A bold prediction from James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report (a double major in Soviet politics and American history and 2002 Jeopardy! champion, according to his bio), in…

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“He wanted to become a billionaire, and he wanted to do it in Kurdistan.” Meet Shlomi Michaels

Here’s a great investigative story about someone you’ve never heard of, but should know about. From Laura Rozen at Mother Jones: It’s the story of a man with a habit…

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Justice ♡ Orwell

Why does Michael B. Mukasey have a portrait of George Orwell hanging in his office? Today I read a document that suggests that the spirit of Orwell–or more precisely Orwell’s…

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Trivialities Difficult to Surpass

“The frequent references to Max Brod, Prague, insomnia, headache, have not been included in the Index.” So runs the inadvertently hilarious advisory sentence to the index of I Am a…

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The 43rd President’s Dark Legacy

Over the last week, the American press has been filled with drip after drip from smug, generally anonymous Bush Administration clones who promise that when Barack Obama is saddled with…

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Rathergate or CBS-gate?

From the New York Times: When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago — claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation…

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Five Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Not Be Secretary of State

It looks like Barack Obama has offered Hillary Clinton the post of Secretary of State and she’s mulling over whether to take the job or not. Obama’s apparent offer makes…

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Herrick – To Music, to becalm his Fever

Charm me asleep, and melt me so With thy delicious numbers, That, being ravish’d, hence I go Away in easy slumbers. Ease my sick head, And make my bed, Thou…

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In Praise of a Prosecutor

What makes a bad prosecutor? It’s simple: Does the prosecutor’s longing for the public limelight, his aspirations for public office, come to overwhelm his dedication to justice, to simply doing…

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The Washington Post’s Principled Stand on Private vs. Public Schools

“Michelle Obama’s visits to two private schools and her inquiries about Washington’s public schools have sparked the inevitable public vs. private debate,” the Post said in an editorial today. “We…

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Bacon on the Roads to Power and Knowledge

Although the roads to human power and to human knowledge lie close together, and are nearly the same, nevertheless on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling on…

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Biden’s “Intern” Nabs Lobbying Contract: Washington adjusts to the Obama Era

The Washington Post had two interesting pieces today about how Washington is responding to the election of Barack Obama. The first said that Obama’s election had “touched off a mini-boom…

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One of the Siegelman Prosecution Team Comes in From the Cold

In September 2007, I posted “The Remarkable ‘Recusal’ of Leura Canary” reviewing one of the many strange aspects of the Siegelman case. The prosecutor who brought this case is the…

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Weekend Read: “On the profound fatuity of twenty-first-century bourgeois existence”

By one catastrophically limited measure, the best novel of the year is surely Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland—best in that it has generated the most intelligent critical disagreement this year on what…

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A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney?

Gene Burns is one of the nation’s most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night,…

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Familiar Faces Come on Board: Fannie Mae veteran on State Department transition team

The Washington Post reports that the “Obama transition team yesterday rolled out a new list of officials who will help guide the process, singling out the Treasury, Defense and State…

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Voter-Fraud Meme, Minnesota Edition

As Norm Coleman’s lead shrinks in the Minnesota Senate race (now down to 206 votes over Al Franken) his campaign’s claims of voter fraud have become more and more boisterous.…

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Who Should Obama Name As Intelligence Chief? (And, more importantly, does it matter?)

The Washington Post ran an article yesterday full of breathless speculation about whom Barack Obama would name to head key intelligence agencies. “The nation’s top two intelligence officers expect to…

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Martin Eisenstadt: America’s Best Pundit

There was a funny, well-executed hoax edition of the New York Times published yesterday, with a main headline of “IRAQ WAR ENDS.” Then this morning someone sent me an email…

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Maybe We Should Just Change It All

“All writing is rewriting,” runs the annoying adage. Annoying because all adages, in their hectoring certainty, feel like sharp pokes in the ear. And annoying squared because, as anyone who’s…

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Potheads for Change

From The Agitator (via Andrew Sullivan): The latest absurdity to come out of the Office of National Drug Control Policy is an anti-pot PR campaign with the motto, “Hey, not…

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Six Questions for David Hendrickson on the Obama Administration, Banana Republics and Foreign Policy

David Hendrickson teaches international politics and American foreign policy in the Political Science Department at Colorado College. He is the author of numerous books and essays, including Peace Pact: The…

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Bailout Was Urgent, Oversight Not So Much

This is beyond pathetic. ABC reports: Lawmakers and the Bush administration frantically hammered out a gargantuan package to save the nation’s economy earlier this fall. But their efforts to recruit…

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