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The Justice Department’s On-Going ‘State Secrets’ Charade

When is information a “state secret” and thus completely exempt from disclosure in legal process, even if its exclusion will produce a manifest injustice? In previous episodes, we have gotten…

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General Clark Excoriates Justice Department Over Siegelman Case

Delivering the keynote speech at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner of the Alabama Democratic Party in Birmingham last night, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley…

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Eckehart’s Just Man

Justus in perpetuum vivet et apud dominum est merces eius. (Wisdom 5: 16) We read a short dictum in today’s epistle spoken by the wise man: “The just [or righteous]…

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The Modern Sorcerer

One of the more intriguing accounts of the life of the inimitable Jane Austen emerged in the pages of The Times in 1926 with the publication of a letter which…

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‘Is Barack a Vegetarian,’ ‘Rumsfeld on Chávez’ and Other Stories from a Newspaper in Decline

The Washington Post continues to be a curious blend of abysmally bad editorial and op-ed writing and far more serious reporting. Perhaps someday this ship will right itself, but for…

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A Nation That Tortures

Is America a nation that tortures? The question is being asked all around the world. It’s not a matter of idle speculation. Under international treaties, which many nations, not being…

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Voltaire on the Modern Sorcery

Le conseiller Courtin lui demanda de quel charme elle s’était servie pour ensorceler la reine: Galigaï, indignée contre le conseiller, et un peu mécontente de Marie de Médicis, répondit: «…

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A Kinder, Gentler Lawfare

Charles J. Dunlap, the Air Force’s Deputy Judge Advocate General, delivered some remarks at an ABA luncheon on November 16, in which he takes a nostalgic tour through the development…

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Well, That Settles It

Sometimes the New York City tabloids get a story which is perfectly suited to their style and format; they regale themselves in it. And right now we have one of…

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Poe’s ‘The Conqueror Worm’

Lo! ’tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of…

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Tax Advice for American Expatriates in Britain, Freely Dispensed by Mark Twain

Times are difficult for Innocents Abroad. In two recent visits to Britain, I have listened to American expatriates express their acute anxiety over positions taken by H.M. Inland Revenue. They…

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Burckhardt on the Historical Might-Have-Been

Bei allen Zerstörungen, läßt sich aber immer eins behaupten: weil uns die Ökonmie der Weltgeschichte im großen dunkel bleibt, wissen wir nie, was geschehen sein würde, wenn etwas, und sei…

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McCain on Waterboarding

I’m not particularly impressed with the recent debates in YouTube format hosted by CNN. The cable network’s management of the process has involved too many serious errors in judgment for…

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Hagel’s Salvo

I still remember being at a foreign-policy themed Washington conference roughly eight years ago and listening to our lunchtime speaker, Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska. I had a vague sense…

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Cather’s New Mexico Sky

The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, — and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more…

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Mitt’s Muslim Problem

A number of the best analysts I know are convinced that the Republican primary race has narrowed to two men: Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. I recently went back to…

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Salon 1, TIME 0

I have been following the blog-battle between Time’s Joe Klein and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald through the weekend. It was launched with Time’s publication of a Klein column in which he…

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Dryden’s ‘Happy the Man’

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be…

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ibn Khald?n’s Definition of Politics

Politics is the ordering of the household or the city as they ought to be according to the requirements of ethics and wisdom so that the multitude could be made…

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Updates on America’s Most Prominent Political Prisoner

Raw Story Looks at Siegelman Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane at The Raw Story launch their series looking into the prosecution and imprisonment of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman.…

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Trent Lott’s Resignation

Trent Lott was quick, in his two appearances yesterday, to rule out health and scandal as reasons for his sudden and very surprising resignation from the Senate. But Washingtonians know…

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Passion for Penguins

I owe what passes for an education to a number of academic institutions, a small army of instructors (some none too patient), and a love for books, music, and the…

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Elections as Art

Bunny Burson, The Politics of Power, BAG Gallery, 168 7th Street, Brooklyn, New York 11215, tel. (718) 858-6069. Opening Reception: Saturday, December 1, 2007, 6-9 pm. Bunny Burson, who was…

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Strindberg’s Inferno

I had been reading the delightful little pamphlet La joie de mourir and it aroused within me a longing to leave this world. In order to investigate the borderland between…

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The Bush Touch: Turning Friends into Enemies

George W. Bush came to power on January 20, 2001. He inherited the most powerful military force ever assembled in human history, and the most significant system of military alliances…

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Mayakovsky’s ‘To his own beloved self the author dedicates these lines’

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Tacitus on the Costs of War

Quotiens causas belli et necessitatem nostram intueor, magnus mihi animus est hodiernum diem consensumque vestrum initium libertatis totius Britanniæ fore. Nam et universi servitutis expertes, et nullæ ultra terræ, ac…

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It’s the Oil, Stupid

Luke Mitchell, “The Black Box: Inside Iraq’s Oil Machine,” Harper’s Magazine, December 2007. I still remember walking to a class at Columbia in the early spring of 2003 and listening…

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