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One of the clearest lessons put to posterity by the writers of classical antiquity is this: humankind constructs the state for its security and happiness, but most importantly, for the…

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Genuine politics cannot risk a step without first having demonstrated its fidelity to morality, and even though politics may justly be called a difficult art, its combination with morality is…

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Congratulations to the editors of Newday, who have seen through the con artistry played by the Gonzales Justice Department, with remarkable success so far, on the American judiciary. In an…

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He just keeps serving them up. It reflects a new vision of the function of the office of Attorney General. Not as the nation’s chief law enforcement office, as a…

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. . . this life is a perpetual chequer-work of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When in possession of what we desire, we are only so much the nearer…

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More important evidence of judicial backbone this afternoon. In response to a motion by the ACLU challenging the Bush Administration’s insistence on keeping all dealings surrounding the FISA Court in…

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It’s hard to imagine that as Labor Day 2007 approaches, we’re so deep into the presidential election process—already a week past the G.O.P.’s Iowa straw poll, for instance. One of…

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Love’s Exchange Donne’s poetry isn’t so easy to master. His near contemporary Ben Jonson and his later advocate William Hazlitt both seem to have formed the same view, namely that…

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Love’s Exchange Love, any devil else but you Would for a given soul give something too. At court your fellows every day Give th’ art of rhyming, huntsmanship, or play,…

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Ride, si sapis, ô puella ride; If thou beest wise, laugh: for since the powers of discourse and Reason, and laughter bee equally proper vnto Man onely, why shall not…

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It’s about us every day, but some days it is stronger than others. And today it is stunning. Consider these examples: In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, the…

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A well-known blogger on Middle Eastern affairs, Matthew Good, reports on his latest Department of Homeland Security reception on returning home at the Detroit Metro Airport following a long stay…

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Is General Petraeus being held captive in the famous man-sized safe that resides in Dick Cheney’s office? The Bush Administration ploughed ahead with its ramp-up of forces in Iraq over…

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Gonzales travels to Baghdad and suddenly a series of suicide bombings produce up to 500 casualties on a single day. The Army announces that the suicide rate among U.S. soldiers…

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There rise authors now and then who seem proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic…

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Recently I asked a clerical friend whether, considering the persistence of torture as a moral issue, he had thought of giving a sermon on the subject? He looked very uncomfortable…

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Preached on April 17, 1625, on Easter Sunday, to the Congregation at St Paul’s Cathedral in London They therefore oppose God in his purpose of dignifying the body of man,…

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Out in West Texas, from which the New England-bred and Andover, Yale and Harvard-educated George W. Bush pretends to hail, the word “break” is most often used with horses. (Bush…

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The Bush Administration has finally achieved something unprecedented. The organized bar–with a vote just one short of unanimity–has declared one of Bush’s executive orders illegal and vowed to seek Congressional…

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Is it about the glory Of our dear motherland?–I ask in vain! Not on his lofty brow, nor in his looks May one peruse his secret thoughts; always The same…

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I keep learning more about the various connections in the Don Siegelman case, and here’s an interesting person we’ve barely discussed: Alabama Senator Richard Shelby (a Republican, though first elected…

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The address is 611 Folsom Street in downtown San Francisco. To be more precise, it’s in a tightly guarded, access restricted room: Room 641A. There’s a loud sucking sound coming…

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Out in West Texas, they have a name for the desert flower that crops up and blooms where the cattle have left their droppings: turd blossom. And George W. Bush…

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Gottfried Benn is certainly the chief of the German expressionist poets. He was a controversial figure, a medical doctor who made his name as a man of letters, and as…

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A drowned driver of a beer truck was dumped onto the table Someone had stuck a dark-pale lilac-colored aster Between his teeth I cut out the tongue and gums With…

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Every day I place less value in intellect. Every day I see more clearly that if the writer is to repossess himself of some part of his old impressions, which…

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Rove and Bush delivered tearful farewells on the White House lawn this morning. It was an emotional experience. But I’m still counting on this evening’s Daily Show to deliver a…

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Under the heading of unplanned ironies, consider the picture of Karl Rove—the man at the center of a Washington corruption storm coming out of the misuse of the Department of…

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