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Private military contractors are now a $120 billion dollar, global industry. The industry has been with us for some time, but it has grown like a mushroom after the storm…

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Last week, a career federal prosecutor friend told me, “Most of us have come to agree that there’s a real problem with political prosecutions on Bush’s watch, and that needs…

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Some say cavalry and others claim infantry or a fleet of long oars is the supreme sight on the black earth. I say it is the one you love. Some…

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Man is evidently intended to live in society; and because there can be no society among creatures who prey upon one another, it was necessary, in the first place, to…

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Manus manum lavat. It means, roughly, “one hand washes the other.” The phrase appeared for the first time in a play by Seneca in which he ridiculed the culture of…

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As I noted a couple of weeks ago, General Petraeus’s predecessor, General Ricardo Sanchez, has now emerged as one of the harshest critics of the Bush Administration’s management of the…

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In civil litigation connected to one of a substantial number of federal prosecutions of campaign funding of contributors to Democratic candidate John Edwards, a federal court has directed the Department…

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For what is man’s soul but a flame. It flickers in and around the body of a man as does the flame around the rough log. Now, one winter’s night,…

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The survivors of three Iraqi civilians killed in the September 16 incident in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square involving Blackwater USA have brought suit in a U.S. federal court seeking damages from…

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The New Yorker‘s Hendrik Hertzberg, in a recent Radar interview, reveals that when it comes to national politics, he turns not to the Washington Post or New York Times, but…

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”I don’t think it, I know it” Each time he is confronted with evidence of his own policies condoning torture, President Bush responds with the same phrase: “We do not…

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Anniston Star The Anniston Star also calls Javert on his latest sleazy press release: Louis Franklin has the worst legal job this side of defending Britney Spears. He is the…

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Peter the Third abolished the torture-chamber, and the Russian star chamber. Catherine the Second abolished torture. Alexander the First abolished it over again. Evidence given under torture is legally inadmissible.…

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Significant new information is appearing on the Siegelman case, in the form of the 143-page deposition of Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer who previously issued an affidavit that described a…

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In the Turpitude of Time, Hope dances on the razor edge. I see those ever healing feet Tread the honed edge above despair. I see the song-wet lip and tossing…

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S’il est vrai qu’en histoire, du moins, les valeurs, qu’elles soient celles de la nation ou de l’humanité, ne survivent pas sans qu’on ait combattu pour elles, le combat (ni…

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The Pravda of the South Speaks Again Early yesterday, a contact on the G.O.P. staff of the House Judiciary Committee told me that her colleagues had taken a step to…

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Thomas Mann, Meerfahrt mit ‘Don Quijote’ in Gesammelte Werke: Frankfurter Ausgabe, Leiden und Größe der Meister, p. 1018 (1934) Yesterday, I posted some thoughts about Cervantes’s Don Quixote and what…

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Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore,…

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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (pt. I 1605, pt. II 1615) The world of Phillip II sits at the heart of the Golden…

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La historia es como cosa sagrada; porque ha de ser verdadera, y donde está la verdad está Dios, en cuanto a verdad; pero, no obstante esto, hay algunos que así…

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This last week, the nation’s leading newspaper established that the Bush administration continues to use torture techniques as a matter of formal policy, crafted at its highest levels. This comes…

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A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa Born in the West, far from the land of palms I said to it, “How like me you are, far away…

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Q: Is it possible to abolish man’s humanity? A: Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, yes; and that is really the characteristic of the Nazi Lager [concentration camp]. About the others, I don’t…

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It seems that a lot of the Alabama press is not amused by Inspector Javert’s claims that the only people asking questions about the Siegelman prosecution are “out of state”…

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Però ne la giustizia sempiterna la vista che riceve il vostro mondo, com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna; che, ben che da la proda veggia il fondo, in pelago…

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From the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Montgomery, Inspector Javert has issued the following statement for the press, which we reproduce with a translation into English and annotations. Because the public…

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The Bush Justice Department does have an essential law enforcement mission, though sometimes it seems to behave much more like a criminal syndicate. It warmly embraces the crime of torture…

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