Author: briggs

  • New York Times Hides Cheney Spy

    Hid him in plain sight, I might add, on the back page of the Saturday national edition. And here’s the bland headline to David Johnston’s inscrutable article on Paul Wolfowitz’s former minion in the Department of Defense’s “Office of Special Plans” who has just been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison (and…

  • Lawless presidents

    Since when do we have a system of Government where the President can simply “waive” away laws? That’s from Glenn Greenwald in a well-considered and comprehensive commentary, “An Ideology of Lawlessness” at digby’s blogspot. Take a read and educate yerself. I have to comment myself, however, on lawless precedents of American presidents since this ain’t…

  • Abramoff & DeLay: “free-market ” friends

    Just cleaning out my files….here’s an excerpt from Thomas B. Edsall’s piece in the Washington Post from 2004: In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology. The Marianas sought to retain exemptions…

  • Habeas Corpus Suspended in the District of Columbia

    A single paragraph in Harper’s Weekly on November 9, 1861 said this: On 23d the President instructed the Marshal for the District of Columbia not to serve writs on the Provost Marshal, but return them to the Court with the explanation that the President has, for the present, suspended the privilege of the writ of…

  • John Yoo’s Opinions: Discuss

    I have to ask how someone as obscure (until recently) as John Yoo, former law clerk to Justice Thomas, currently a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt law school, is in the position of writing innovative legal rationales for the U.S. Justice department advocating denial of legal rights to U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,…

  • Jack and the Greenstalk

    It’s funny how shit keeps a bubblin’ up. The Bush administration is like a plumbing disaster these days. And all those leaky pipes are connected to each other. Which brings me to indicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Back before his name was coffee break conversation, in the beginning of Senator McCain’s not-yet-newsworthy Indian Affairs Committee…