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Archive: Mar 2009

Another Political Prosecution Fails

On Friday a jury quickly acquitted former Puerto Rican Governor Anibal Acevedo Vilá on all of nine counts of election funding violations. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: The acquittal was a…

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Senator Sanders Blocking Key Obama Nomination

I reported back in February on the case of Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs employee and derivatives cheerleader who President Obama nominated to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission…

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Hedge Fund Socialism

There’s already much debate about the merits of the administration’s plan to clean up toxic assets, but one person I spoke with – a well-connected Democrat representing a big investment…

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Will the Dollar’s Days of Glory End?

What would happen if the world markets began to move away from the dollar as a reserve currency? Reuters reports: A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world…

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The Prisoner

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Brendan DeMelle discuss the plight of one of the best known of the political prisoners of the Bush era, Paul Minor, in this piece in…

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Donne’s Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our…

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Doddering in the Polls

From Associated Press: While Dodd, 64, has only recently found himself in the nation’s political hot seat because of his role in the AIG bonus debacle, it has become clear…

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The Woes of a Torture Lawyer

The San Jose Mercury-News carries a story about the possibility that John Yoo may be disciplined or fired by the University of California at Berkeley: UC Berkeley leaders are wrestling…

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Augustine on the Illusion and Reality of Time

Quid est enim tempus? Quis hoc facile breuiterque explicauerit? Quis hoc ad uerbum de illo proferendum uel cogitatione comprehenderit? Quid autem familiarius et notius in loquendo commemoramus quam tempus? Et…

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Weekend Read: “Frenzy finds its weapons”

There is no translation of any worthwhile book that hasn’t had its sometimes vigorous detractors. Jerome, who gave us the Vulgate, was forced to flee Rome to finish his work…

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The Steele-Colbert Rap Battle

From the folks at Comedy Central: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Michael Steele’s Rap Battle Response comedycentral.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political…

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Jeffrey Goldberg and Israeli War Crimes

Jeffrey Goldberg is upset. “When the IDF fails to achieve its goal, and ends up inflicting needless destruction and suffering, it sullies not only its own name, but the name…

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Krugman’s AIG Verdict

Paul Krugman demonstrates, yet again, that he is the single most effective critic of the Obama Administration’s emerging economic policies, put through another series of harsh tests this week: This…

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The Fallout from Gaza

As Israeli politics make a leap to the right, Ethan Bronner charts the growing public debate in Israel over techniques used in the assault on Gaza in a compelling article:…

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Dereliction of Duty

Congressional Quarterly reports that Attorney General Eric Holder reads the news but feels no obligation to act on what he has learned: The clamor for a Justice Department probe into…

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Global Collapse in Manufacturing

More seriously bad news. The New York Times reports that around the globe, manufacturing is in a freefall: That manufacturing is in decline is hardly surprising, but the depth and…

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Congressman Murtha’s Friends Team Up on Big Biodefense project

As has been widely reported, two firms with close links to Congressman John Murtha–lobby shop PMA Group and defense contractor Kuchera Defense Systems–have recently been raided by the feds. Now…

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Bush’s Authoritarian Presidency

The Associated Press reports on the Bush presentation behind closed doors in Calgary: ”This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United States…

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Eric Cantor: Still on UBS’s dole

As the economic crisis unwinds, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has been a stern advocate for Main Street vs. Wall Street, has denounced the excesses of financial institutions, and just…

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News from Absurdistan

During both the Bush and Clinton years, the White House argued that the United States should “engage” with governments in the Caspian region, saying that such a strategy would do…

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More on Countrywide’s VIPs

From the Washington Post: Executives at Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest names of the housing boom, routinely violated internal company policies to provide below-market rates on home loans to…

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Obama is Far From a Radical Reformer

John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the book You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. This column originally appeared in the…

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Remote in Time, or Alien in Language

I’m inhabiting a pleasant little temporal interim right now, the lucky space that opens up when a new Bob Dylan record is announced. Dylan’s readers (more upon that apparently errant…

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Bring in the Feds

In the unendingly bizarre world of politics and criminal justice in Alabama, a civil war seems to have erupted within the ranks of the all-powerful Alabama G.O.P. With the head…

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Gitmo: Colonel Wilkerson Tells It All

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff, offers a reprise of important points about Guantánamo “that the media largely missed.” They “largely missed” just about everything, of course. Still,…

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When Torture is “Torture”

One moment still serves to define the Bush Administration’s relationship with the press. On April 29, 2006, comedian Stephen Colbert addressed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with President Bush present,…

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Senator Dodd and the AIG Bonuses (Updated)

From Gawker: Two AIG executives fingered by the New York Post as recipients of blood-money bonuses personally donated to the presidential campaign of Chris Dodd, who inserted language into the…

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