March 07, 2009
You know the WV Quarter? Nice mountain... be a shame if something happened to it....
January 15, 2009
Hilzoy thinks Obama has to do it: It seems to me that these facts imply that if Barack Obama, or his administration, believe that there are reasonable grounds to believe that members of the Bush administration have committed torture, then...
October 04, 2008
The US is a key audience for the hundreds of millions they are throwing into propoganda operations? I think Marc Lynch's response is on target. Presenting American audiences as a key target for manipulation through the covert dissemination of propaganda...
October 01, 2008
It appears the White House did it - with of course the assistance of various people in DoJ. I strongly support further investigations into this....
September 30, 2008
September 02, 2008
There are several stories within the general view of the ineptitude of the coordinated "security" forces outside the RNC. One is about the harassment and abuse of the press. Another the apparent inability of the authorities to discern the difference...
August 31, 2008
You think I'm kidding?: Bentley describes God ordering him to kick an elderly lady in the face: "I am thinking, 'God, why is the power of God not moving?' And He said, 'It is because you haven't kicked that women...
August 27, 2008
I didn't follow this brouhaha closely enough to say whether or not this will change anyone's interpretation of what did or didn't happen. But it definitely makes one anti-Beauchamp source a lot less credible....
July 28, 2008
The mind reels. That she held such a position of power is revolting. And I probably can't get my head around just how damaging her actions were to the US Department of Justice.UPDATE: Does the incompetence of it all make...
June 17, 2008
Shocking. Just shocking. Who'd have thought? Well, pretty much everyone with a pulse, but it's maddening nonetheless: The Army official who managed the Pentagon's largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve...
May 05, 2008
Some of these are repeating from comments, but these are the relevant stories covering the WVU Faculty Senate vote that recommended that WVU President Garrison resign: The basic news blurb from our local AM talk radio station. Commentary from one...
April 17, 2008
These are horrifying, and heartbreaking, numbers. Roughly one in five U.S. troops is suffering from major depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an equal number have suffered brain injuries, a new study...
March 08, 2008
So I just got a card from the county clerk asking me to confirm my address since she's gotten news that I've moved. I'm really curious how she got such news, because I certainly haven't moved. And the timing of...
February 23, 2008
This cartoon on the FISA issue is really funny (in a most unfortunate way)....
February 15, 2008
Oy. It's not only the likes of the State Department and the Justice Department that stops producing data when it might become politically painful. Today we see another example of this in economics. Got bad economic indicators? Well, then stop...
February 05, 2008
And the budget maker spoke and said, I give unto each service one third, now and forever ...It really is amazing that the Pentagon's budget has been divied up so precisely in every budget for 40 years. Definitely a point...
January 14, 2008
West Virginia produces lots of coal. Coal producers get lots of money from the coal they sell. Mining coal is destructive to the environment (mountaintop removal, valley fill, etc.) and people (black lung disease, etc.), so coal producers are always...
November 01, 2007
I'm just completely reprinting this entire George Packer post from his blog over at Vanity Fair. My level of frustration at our conduct in this war (both on this issue and others - how can America possibly be having a...
October 03, 2007
Jack Goldsmith was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Marty Lederman summarizes some of the extreme measures the Bush/Cheney White House took to keep the Department of Justice out of the loop here. Think about that for a second....
September 30, 2007
It's a given that any administration has the right to use the executive branch in ways that benefit that party's supporters. That's the political "spoils system" bequeathed to us by Jackson something like 200 years ago. It's not necessarily pretty,...
August 25, 2007
We classify waaaaay too much information in this country - and sometimes for truly horrible reasons. The thing to take away from this post by Jacob Sullum is that the Bush administration's concession that it classifies information that presents no...
August 17, 2007
So last night I also read this piece on torture/interrogation that recently received such high praise. I don't know how much of it is "new" news, but that's perhaps largely immaterial. It's an extremely well written and truly disturbing article....
August 07, 2007
You have got to be kidding me. Please, please, please be kidding me. Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling went to one of these Karl Rove briefings? And it's one week later when Harriet Miers gets the first draft of the...
July 02, 2007
While we get annoyed with the president's decision to commute Libby's sentence, we might want to keep in mind Libby's other bad deeds - so that we remember just what a corrupt piece of work this man (and the administration...
June 17, 2007
The New Yorker has a depressing profile of the man behind the Taguba report. It's worth a look.By the way, the article also mentions Gen. Bantz Craddock a few times. As he is a WVU graduate it seems entirely possible...
June 11, 2007
I suppose some new revelation about how low this administration has sunk shouldn't surprise anyone at this point. And, to be honest, I'm not really surprised by this. Still, what's one more scandal at the Justice Department at this point....
May 03, 2007
Today is the sixty-second anniversary of the sinking of the Cap Arcona (and two other ships) by the RAF. Between the four attacks by the RAF, and the fact that the SS mowed down many people trying to get to...
April 25, 2007
I realize everyone's outrage meter has long since fallen off over this administration, but here's another one: Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed...
April 04, 2007
...they really are out to get you (emphasis mine): A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political...
March 19, 2007
Emptywheel has an interesting post up on testimony by Knodell and Leonard before Rep. Waxman's committee. What stood out to me was that the White House believes the president has complete power to declassify information at a moment's notice in...
March 15, 2007
The information coming to light on the attorney firings brings up questions raised during the Abramoff investigations, namely, was the Bush administration deliberately using non-government communications pathways to conduct shady business? (emphasis mine) One email, sent to Justice Department Chief...
February 13, 2007
So now both Shakes and Amanda have resigned their positions. Shakes has been less public about the details of the harassment she has received, but this has gone into the realm of witch hunt. There will be some who clamor...
February 12, 2007
I found this on Ezra Klein's blog. Why this isn't a bigger deal in our society I'll never understand. That people regularly make jokes about it is nauseating. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to...
January 16, 2007
Armand mentioned the Lam case a couple of days ago, but I just saw via Balloon Juice that the number is possibly up to seven fired prosecutors. As Tim F. says, TPM is doing the work: Okay, so we already...
January 05, 2007
The Bush administration has no shame. The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to...
December 12, 2006
Faith, family, then country. That's the way to approach national defense. Jesus fucking christ....
October 01, 2006
NYT. Among those who became aware earlier this year of the fall 2005 communications between Mr. Foley and the 16-year-old page, who worked for Representative Rodney Alexander, Republican of Louisiana, were Representative John A. Boehner, the majority leader, and Representative...
September 24, 2006
It really depresses me sometimes, that with shit like this , I'm really glad that every day brings me closer to menopause. If my mom is any guide to the timeline, unfortunately, I've got about 20 more years of menstruation...
September 17, 2006
We blew up a country, parked 130,000 of our own troops (and several tens of thousands of our allies) on it, declared we owned the place, and then hired politically loyal but supremely incompetant idiots to rebuild it: Many of...
September 12, 2006
I haven't been following the Plame scandal all that closely lately, but here's an argument that Corn and Isikoff are missing something might important in their widely talked-about book Hubris. Do all roads still lead back to the vice president?...
July 23, 2006
We create the conditions that allow the greedy and the power hungry to undermine democracy and enrich themselves on our dime. An independent investigation has found that imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took advantage of secrecy and badgered congressional...
I read the Sunday papers so you don't have to: Most Interesting Story: The US is reducing our military spending in Africa. Why is this interesting? Al Qaeda (short term) and raw materials (long term). Follow me here. The Republican...
July 18, 2006
CNN (emphasis mine): President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, administration officials said Tuesday. Bush refused to grant security clearances for department investigators who were looking into...
July 11, 2006
It's all over the news, and I'm sure we're not the first blog to put it up, but the US government (specifically, the White House via a DoD memo) announced that all detainees worldwide will be treated according to the...
July 04, 2006
Ready and waiting for any excuse?. Emphasis mine. The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court...
April 24, 2006
...we have these statistics, from Dr. Violet Socks: Here’s what middle-school kids think about rape, according to a survey of 11-14 year-olds: 51% of boys and 41% of girls believe that a man has a right to force a woman...
April 19, 2006
Secrecy, secrecy, secrecy. The latest move in the president's cunning plan to remove every government action from public view is to seize papers from the estate of the late Jack Anderson (who of course made his career by uncovering bad...
March 24, 2006
This blog is coming up on it's second anniversary. I can't speak for binky or armand, but I got into blogging as a way of expanding the circle of people to argue and debate with. I had read blogs for...
March 19, 2006
Long New York Times story today about the "secret" US prison/interrogation facility in Baghdad. Suffice it to say, the abuse their was on par with (or exceeded) the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It gets harder and harder to argue that...
March 15, 2006
...they can hire me and pay me for my professional services by appointment and contract, not show up unannounced at my office hours, pump me for incriminating information and harass my students. Sheriff Lee Baca said Friday that his deputies...
March 13, 2006
From Feministing, the story of a Fargo ND man who, though barred from getting close to a women's health clinic by a restraining order, decided to get close anyway. With close-ups of people entering and exiting the clinic, that he...
March 05, 2006
No, I don't think I'm better than you. However, I also don't think you are better than me....
February 22, 2006
Who knew there was a connection? The actors who star in movie The Road to Guantanamo were questioned by police at Luton airport under anti-terrorism legislation, it has emerged. The men, who play British inmates at the detention camp, were...