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“The Hiker” speaks.— If you would like to see our European morality for once as it appears from a distance, in order to measure it against other moralities, past and…

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We’re getting to know Judge Mark Everett Fuller, the judge in the Don Siegelman case. In the first two installments [1] [2], we discussed how Fuller came to be selected…

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Freshly recharged with a new battery pack, our bionic vice president had another encounter with CNN’s Larry King a day back and I finally caught up with it last night.…

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Department of the Army, Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007) Those despairing of American policymakers’ mistakes in Iraq (of which there…

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This morning, the momentum for impeachment of Alberto Gonzales is building decisively. My friends in the Washington scene, who told me with assurance a month ago that it wouldn’t happen…

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It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence. The enticement implied is too tempting for a human…

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The legal career of Alabama Judge Mark Everett Fuller, who presided over the conviction and sentencing of former Governor Don Siegelman, has always been linked to the Republican party. Fuller…

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Today’s Washington Post contains another in the now seemingly endless number of installments portraying the quality of justice that the Bush Justice Department deals out to its corporate sponsors. A…

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I have just posted an original translation of a major poem by the early German Romanticist Clemens Brentano. He is not a well-known figure, either in Germany or abroad. But…

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Master, without your compassion I must despair in the abyss Do you not want to carry me With strong arms back to the light? With each year your goodness Reaches…

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Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided…

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Over the last two months I have examined many different aspects of the Justice Department’s prosecution of former Governor Don E. Siegelman. The controversy around Karl Rove and the Justice…

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Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Col.), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, explains his formula for victory in the current conflict in the Middle East: “If it is up to me,…

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Jeffrey Toobin has written a beautiful, but very worrying, piece in the current New Yorker. It’s more than competent reporting; it can stand as a monument to a dedicated career…

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The great unraveling of the Bush Administration’s politically abusive prosecution of Governor Siegelman has just started. The Department of Justice is still busy coming up with new variations on “the…

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Yesterday the FBI and IRS investigators raided the home of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the dean of the Senate Republicans. And at this point it’s widely rumored that all…

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Not since Elisabeth Bumiller wrote her famous ode to the threadcount of Dubya’s pillows in the hallowed pages of the New York Times have I seen something quite capable of…

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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is…

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In the next few days we’ll be running a major new story breaking some significant new ground in the Siegelman case. For a teaser of what’s coming, tune in today…

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On the level of historical insight and political thought there prevails an ill-defined, general agreement that the essential structure of all civilizations is at a breaking point. Although it may…

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Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883) George William Curtis, The Editor’s Easy Chair, Harper’s, Mar. 1891 A week ago this morning, I was standing in the magnificent library of…

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Having spent the last week overseas, I was busy on return catching up with missed episodes of Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.” And I found the fake-news coverage of the testimony…

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Nothing does more harm to the state than a tyrant; when he rules, equal application of law comes to an end, the one man is tyrant, and he keeps unto…

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I have just posted my translation of one of Georg Trakl’s poems, The Song of Kaspar Hauser from the collection published posthumously in 1915 entitled Sebastian im Traum (Sebastian Dreaming.)…

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for Bessie Loos Truly he loved the sun, as it descended in purple from the hill The paths in the woods, the singing blackbird And the joy of the green.…

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The Department of Justice was required to reply to the House Judiciary Committee’s document production demand by the close of business on Friday. As anticipated, it did not do so.…

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I’m back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC alerted me to…

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If one were asked in these days what gift should a Prime Minister ask first from the fairies, one would name the power of attracting personal friends. Eloquence, if it…

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