Category: Edgewise

  • Resumption of feud narrowly averted

    Like most people I was following the tragic Sago mine disaster. I couldn’t help noticing that the CEO of International Coal Group, the owner of the mine, was a fellow named Ben Hatfield. Hatfield? I thought to myself. As in the Hatfields and the McCoys? Radio reports about the lone survivor of the disaster caused…

  • Bush signed anti-torture statute with fingers crossed

    >”When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.” > >”The question is, ” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” >”The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty. “which is to be master–that’s all.” Lewis…

  • 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,…

  • Even some conservatives can’t get behind presidential law-breaking

    In a long well considered post, Glenn Greenwald posits that the illegal wiretap scandal might be one that resists the usual tamping down by the Bush cult of personality (Breaking the Daou Cycle: Conservative opposition to Bush’s law-breaking): > Former Bush loyalists are now, in droves, expressing discomfort or worse with George Bush generally and…