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It’s Friday, and that means more politicos scurrying for the life rafts on the main deck of the Titanic (a/k/a U.S. Department of Justice under Alberto Gonzales). Two interesting notices…

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Scott Horton discusses the case of Jose Padilla and the Bush Administration’s warfare policy as it affects lawyers (both civilians and uniformed military) who are defending detainees at Guantánamo in…

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We’ve been making a trek through time and space with some frequency to a peculiar destination. It is a fairly primitive cabin in the woods, a Waldhütte. It’s not much,…

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Arnica, eyebright, the drink from the well with the roll star die on top, in the cabin, written in the book —whose name did it receive before my own? —…

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Over the last two weeks there was a flap over a piece published in The New Republic by an American soldier in Iraq named Scott Beauchamp. He described a number…

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In many respects the Bush Administration has been a mild echo of the McCarthy era, though in some ways it has been far worse. Joseph McCarthy was a powerful individual,…

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A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall…

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In the darkest days of World War II, in early 1942, both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill went before their people and gave them a straight account of the struggle…

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Hardly a week passes in which I don’t get a message from someone within the great bureaucratic wasteland on the Potomac about the Bush Administration’s latest schemes relating to war…

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Critics of the Administration’s heavy-handed surveillance practices have suggested for some time that the Administration could not be pulling off all of its warrantless and often clearly illegal techniques without…

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Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harme Nor question much That subtile wreath of haire, which crowns my arme; The mystery, the signe you must not touch, For…

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For the second time in two weeks the name of Abraham Foxman, the long-serving director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has surfaced in the news in a way that discredits…

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Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is certainly one of the greatest works of literature in English or any other language. It gives up more meaning on every reading. And Moby Dick…

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Scott Horton will discuss the latest revelations concerning the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman, including evidence of the involvement of Karl Rove in the process, details of…

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But it’s not simply that language composes poetry and thinks for me, it also drives my feelings, it directs my entire spiritual being, the more self-evidently, the more unconsciously I…

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In some correspondence a year ago with Andrew Sullivan, I pointed to the parallels between a number of the dead-ender crowd who favor uncritical (indeed, unthinking) support of President Bush…

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Around the country students are returning to school, and countless thousands will no doubt shortly be asked to pen an essay on ‘What I did with my summer vacation.’ However,…

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The Washington Post’s Amar C. Bakshi offers a very solid interview with my friend Ahmed Rashid conducted at his house in Lahore. Rashid is the author of Taliban (which I…

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“That was well said, remarked Candide, but we must cultivate our garden.” That’s the most famous line from Voltaire’s best-known book. And Candide is, of course, filled with gardens, from…

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Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were…

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Who wrote the Great American Novel? As readers of No Comment know, I award that honor with no hesitation, to Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama, the author of To Kill…

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Today the leaders of the NAFTA states are holding an important summit to help chart the regional trade association’s future. NAFTA is the largest free trade association in the world…

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The deadline was today at 2:30 p.m.: that’s when the Bush Administration was to have produced documents concerning the legal basis upon which it had implemented a warrantless surveillance program,…

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Dictes moy ou n’en quel pays Est Flora le belle Romaine Archipiades, ne Thaïs, Qui fut sa cousine germaine, Echo parlant quant ruyt ou maire Dessus riviè ou sus estan,…

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Scott Horton will be discussing legal affairs developments in Washington, with a focus on issues surrounding Alberto Gonzales, the Department of Justice, the case of former Alabama Governor Don E.…

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Over the weekend, I’ve heard from several different sources very close to the Bush Administration about the high-level discussions over the September 15 report on Iraq (usually referred to in…

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A group of soldiers and noncommissioned officers from the 82nd Airborne serving in Iraq published an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times in which they sharply criticized American press coverage…

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James Risen and Eric Lichtblau offer some significant further analysis of the recent Administration-sponsored amendment of the FISA statute in the New York Times.. Electronic surveillance, they note, was just…

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