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Celebrating the Life of Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky was one of the greatest poets of the last century. His work can be celebrated for many things, but for me Brodsky stands out especially as a bridge…

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Can a Surge Strategy Work in Afghanistan?

The latest talk out of Washington focuses on the idea of a “surge” in Afghanistan to match the strategy implemented in Iraq. Of course the major challenge facing Iraq was…

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Chekhov – the Necessity of Redeeming the Past

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Six Questions for Alex Gibney, Producer of the Oscar-Nominated Taxi to the Dark Side

It’s Oscar season, and documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney faces a dilemma that his contemporaries could only dream of. He’s competing against himself. Of the six feature-length documentaries up for an…

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Hamilton on the Balance Between Liberty and Security

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction…

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Challenging Torture

At the end of chapter 22 of the Acts of the Apostles, certainly a vital chapter because of its chronicling of the life of Paul of Tarsus, comes this dramatic…

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Hölderlin on Pindar’s Nomos

Das Gesetz, Von allen der König, Sterblichen und Unsterblichen; das führt eben Darum gewaltig Das gerechteste Recht mit allerhöchster Hand. Das Unmittelbare, streng genommen, ist für die Sterblichen unmöglich, wie…

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Pindar’s Nomos

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The Case for Impeachment

Raoul Berger, Impeachment: An Instrument of Regeneration, Harper’s Magazine, January 1974. As the final eleven months of the Bush Administration are being counted off in Washington, the accepted wisdom is…

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Hildegard’s Admonition to Do Justice

From Hildegard Abess at Rupertsberg to Henry, King of England, greetings: When a certain man holds a high office over other men, the Lord commands him: “Yours are the gifts…

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Hide and Seek With the Justice Department

Judgments are in on Michael Mukasey’s debut before the Senate Judiciary Committee as attorney general—from the senators, their staffers, the media and the public. Mukasey did not get a passing…

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Góngora – for El Greco

Esta en forma elegante, oh peregrino, de pórfido luciente dura llave, el pincel niega al mundo más süave, que dio espíritu a leño, vida a lino. Su nombre, aún de…

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Goldoni’s Bout With Lawyering

Ero avvocato; ero stato presentato al tribunale: si trattava ora di trovare i clienti. Tutti i giorni andavo al palazzo per vedere arringare i maestri in quell’arte e, intanto, mi…

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Another Election Season, Another Political Prosecution in Alabama

The morning calm in the small Alabama town of Toney, located near Huntsville, was broken at 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning. A team of five FBI agents, accompanied by a prison…

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Mogilevich Arrested and Charged

This past weekend, a press story out of Moscow raised considerably more attention in the West than in the Russian media. Russian police announced the arrest of Vladimir Nekrasov, the…

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Harper’s Favorite Son Declares His Race for the Presidency

This week they’re dropping like flies. Time to replenish the ranks. A Harper’s writer declares his candidacy to be President of the United States: I have pretty much made up…

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Plato – the Præses lupus

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Department of Saturnine Behavior

Georges Danton, falling himself victim to the Terror, said “la révolution dévore ses enfants” – the revolution is eating its own children. The Neoconservative enterprise has been a catastrophe of…

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‘Reasonable Minds Can Differ’

In the view of Carl Schmitt and other critics of traditional liberalism on the European hard right (though later picked up and echoed by some in the critical studies movement…

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Pope’s Essay on Man

’Twas then, the studious head or generous mind, Follower of God, or friend of human-kind, Poet or patriot, rose but to restore The faith and moral Nature gave before; Re-lumed…

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Blackstone on Torture

The rack, or question, to extort a confession from criminals, is a practice of a different nature: this being only used to compel a man to put himself upon his…

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‘Trust Us’ Government and Other Lies

If you review Bush’s State of the Union Address from Monday night, you will note that his fear-mongering served one consistent aim: to attack the privacy rights and expectations of…

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An Anniversary to Ponder

Today marks an important anniversary. On January 30, 1933—seventy-five years ago today—the power of the state fell into the hands of Hitler and his Nazi party, what Germans know as…

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Tucholsky’s Liberal Moment

. . . And when everything has passed by–; when everything has run its full course: the herd mentality, the bliss of mass rallies at which slogans are shouted and…

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More Obstruction at Justice

Richard Schmitt and Tom Hamburger at the Los Angeles Times are reporting this morning on the status of the probe by Scott Bloch, head of the U.S. Office of Special…

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Six Questions for Christopher Slobogin, Author of Privacy at Risk

Yesterday the Senate had two votes related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and President Bush devoted a portion of his State of the Union Address to a call for…

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POTUS in the Well

Last night he performed a duty required by the Constitution, addressing the State of the Union in remarks to Congress—as the Washington Post tells us “probably” for the last time…

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Mandelstam’s Stalin Epigram

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