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In reviewing Bleak House on Sunday, I noted that the Tulkinghorns walk among us today – referring to the solicitor in whom Dickens embodied all the worst human failings of…

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The hallmark of the Bush Administration is impunity. The last leader of the English-speaking world to openly hold himself above the law wound up having his head separated from his…

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At the end of the week, Condoleezza Rice was busy attempting to put down suggestions in the press of a growing rift between her and Vice President Cheney. She didn’t…

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Last year, I gave two speeches in which I reviewed the palette of eleven interrogation techniques which were – according to published accounts in Newsweek and ABC News – being…

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This weekend brings word of a significant terrorist plot which targeted the delivery of aviation fuel to JFK. It was hyped in a completely shameless fashion by media airheads (Josh…

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Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Harper’s Magazine, April 1852 – October 1853 Harper’s Magazine was launched with many literary aspirants, but with one fully recognized literary giant, whose works it published…

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George Frederic Handel, Rodelinda “Then you should have known Dr. Burney who wrote the history of music. I knew him exceedingly well when I was a young man.” That made…

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Did Donald Rumsfeld and his Neocon all-star team of Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambone and DiRita – with backing from John Bolton at State – actually attempt to provoke a war with…

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His name is Adam Kokesh, and among other things, he’s the man who kept the famous tally on Alberto Gonzales’s convenient memory lapses during his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. Now…

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How is the Iraq War unlike every other war fought in America’s history? Among other things, in that it is a war pursued by the United States with private soldiers…

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As noted previously, the Bush Administration has a now well established double track policy on soldiers who wear uniforms at political functions, including rallies for or against the Iraq War.…

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Noonan may have been Reagan’s best speechwriter, but recently she seems to have lost her way. I remember that embarrassingly infantile, giggly piece she wrote after Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech…

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Something’s rotten in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Heart of Dixie Edition, continued. Seems that the New York Times has now secured the full text of the affidavit which is quoted…

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Some months ago one of my Alabama relations mentioned that she had been tracking the prosecution of Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat. “There’s something awfully fishy about this whole prosecution.…

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Pogo was a comic-strip figure created by Walt Kelly which flourished in newspaper syndication in the era between Truman and Nixon. The title character was a ferral denizen of the…

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The more we track the still-unfolding U.S. attorneys scandal, the more it appears to be in its essence something different: a massive scheme to corrupt the elections process. Today’s National…

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After five years in which Congress abdicated its Constitutional duties of oversight–with the most disastrous consequences, and nowhere more sorely missed than in the field of intelligence–we witness the first…

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We’re at peak commencement season right now, and so far we’ve paused in this column to note several speeches by administration figures – Cheney’s disgraceful speech at West Point, Gates’s…

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T.H. White, The Age of Scandal: An Excursion Through a Minor Period (1950) A common plot of the science fiction genre first put forward by the fertile imagination of H.G.…

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Among the army of columnists that populate the American print world, George Will is my favorite Tory. I use “Tory” in the best sense – in the sense that Samuel…

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Law professor and Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks examines the court-martial of Commander Matthew Diaz and comes out almost exactly where I did. The prosecution of Diaz highlights the…

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Slate has been taking an interesting look at graphic design over the last few days, including a fascinating piece on the evolution of the world’s most ubiquitous font: Helvetica. The…

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No U.S. senator has made more trips out to Iraq than Joe Lieberman. He’s a fixture out there. The regular junket has been a part of his campaign to be…

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Marine Corporal Adam Kokesh is an Iraq war veteran who has exactly three weeks of service remaining as a reservist. Now he’s facing a dishonorable discharge. Why? He wore fatigues…

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Conviction on a felony works an automatic disbarment. Which helps explain why Alberto Gonzales is so eager to keep his fingers wrapped about the wheel of the nation’s prosecutorial machinery.…

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Tom Heffelfinger, the U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis who was replaced by one of Monica Goodling’s best 30-something friends, Rachel Paulose, has continued to be something of a mystery case. Was…

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Note: the original version of this blog post conflated two separate stories. This version corrects the error. The Red Cross study of the United States concentration camps at Guantánamo said…

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The Anchorage Daily News reports that the senior-most Republican in the Senate, Ted Stevens of Alaska, is currently the subject of an FBI corruption investigation which is focusing on a…

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