Category: Health of the Republic
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Call to Action: Oppose Telecom Immunity
Tomorrow (Jun 20) the House is likely to pass a “compromise” revision to the FISA law so as to, in effect, grant complete immunity to telecommunication companies who knowingly broke the law in supporting the Bush administration’s illegal eavesdropping program. Make no mistake: This isn’t about the telecoms per se — House Democrats offered to…
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Real Leadership
“Leadership” is a word tossed around a lot today, especially by those who evidence none of it. But today, in the United States Senate, Christopher Dodd (D-CT) stood up for the rule of law and demonstrated the sort of leadership that once made this nation great. Faced with Harry Reid’s inexplicable kowtowing to the forces…
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Health of the Republic: Down 3% to 12%
Calling Orwell…. Calling George Orwell… Or maybe Kafka is a better target. US military prosecutors have asked for — and now have been granted — a blanket order preventing the defense counsel of a Gitmo detainee from discussing the identity of any prosecution witness with anyone, the defendant included. The defense argues (correctly!) that this…
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Recycled: What’s So Wrong About Military Tribunals, Anyway?
Another piece written some time ago (circa 2002 January) that reads chillingly a propos today. This was written before the series of judicial rebukes to the President’s overreaching constitutional “doctrine” of unlimited executive power. Sadly, those rebukes have not rendered the points raised moot.
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Waterboarding
I don’t like me-too blogs but every once in awhile, someone writes on a topic in a way that exactly captures my own feeling, a way that I could never match, much less trump. This piece by Joe Galloway is one such. My God, how did we come to a point when Senators and Representatives…
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Recycled: Just Wrong
Long before this blog, I kept an equally-erratic literary journal called A Voice in the Wilderness. And while nothing written there was particularly world-shattering, I don’t want it to get lost in the mists of cyberspace. So to do my part to save the planet, I’m going to recycle and reuse that content, putting the…
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Worrisome Phrase
In reading this AP News story on the upcoming speech by the President, I came across the following: Bush and his senior advisers are likely to hear the initial thinking from Ryan Crocker, Bush’s envoy in Baghdad [emphasis added] Isn’t Ryan Crocker the accredited ambassador to Iraq? Confirmed and empowered, one would hope, by the…
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Health of the Republic: Down 10% to 15%
With exactly 18 months left to go in office, this President has made a sweeping and unprecedented play for unchecked power. According to a Washington Post article, the President intends to claim that Congress cannot pursue its investigation into the political firing of 9 US Attorneys, because the President has exerted a broad “executive privilege”…
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Health of the Republic down, 4% to 25%
The Health of the Republic bar has dropped another 4% in recent weeks. This is largely due to the unfolding three scandals at the Department of Justice: The blatantly-political firing of eight US prosecutors The new revelations about presidential interference in the internal DOJ audit of the warrantless wiretapping program The rampant abuse of National…
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Health of the Republic down, 1% to 29%
The Health of the Republic bar has shifted downward another percentage point. This follows the promulgation of a presidential decree that gives the White House a greater say over the issuance of policy guidelines by agencies. Previously most such documents were crafted by civil servants but now, they must pass through a politically-appointed gatekeeper (a…