Over at Slate, Emily Bazelon, speaking of le affaire Snowden, minces a few mots while remarking that “Snowden’s revelations seem to catch Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in misleading testimony.” Here’s the testimony that, to Bazelon, “seems” to be “misleading.” “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds…
Barack Obama, sending the Machiavel to school. Again.
Is there glee in the White House over the latest revelations of National Security Agency mega-snooping? I wouldn’t be surprised. Sen. Rand Paul has another arrow in his quiver, and daddy Ron Paul even praised leaker Ron Snowden, saying that Snowden has “done a great service for telling the truth.” That kind of crazy talk…
Mary Matalin, Bill Kristol: NSA good, IRS bad
Which government agency should you hate? The one that secretly spies on you and threatens to apply criminal penalties to those who expose its, um, crimes, or the one that operates openly and investigates and exposes its own failures to apply the law fairly? You guessed it, the latter. Right-wing windbags Mary Matalin and Bill…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Damn straight it’s the shoes, white boy. And put some clothes on. This ain’t exactly Fire Island.” “I’ll change that for you when we get to the top if you say please.” “You need to get a bigger rock if you want to get in shape for two. When’s the blessed event?”…
Calling Justice Scalia
I don’t know if Nino can protect me, but I’m putting through a call on, yes, my Verizon cell. Obama only wants to protect me, of course, regardless of what that awful Glenn Greenwald has to say. Or that awful New York Times. One can hope that reaction to this latest outrage will be the first step…
Meaney, Fukuyama, and Mishra, Round 2
Yesterday, I talked up the Nation’s Tom Meaney and his subjects/victims Pankaj Mishra and Francis Fukuyama and today I’d like to return to the fray. In his review of Fukuyama’s most recent book, The Origins of Order, Meaney, recapitulates, in a not too friendly manner, Fukuyama’s intellectual progress from his famous/infamous “The End of History?”…
Antonin Scalia, my hero for a day
I’ve often made fun of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, because he deserved it. Well, today he deserves my praise, and the praise of every other American, for his brilliant defense of the Fourth Amendment, unfortunately in a dissent, protesting the Court’s decision to allow states to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a…
Thomas Meaney: Five thousand feet above the five thousand foot folks
A grad student who knows everything? That seems to be the case with Thomas Meaney over at the Nation, who pours both illumination and condescension on mega-thinkers like Francis Fukuyama and Pankaj Mishra. I first caught up with Tom in his four-barreled review of After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge From the Global South 1957–1986 (Giuliano Garavini), The Poorer Nations:…
Bob Woodward: aging, wrinkled prick
Bob Woodward wants to know what the president knew and when he knew it, or rather, had the president known something, when would he have known it. Big bad Bob, seriously desperate for attention, gets a little from Tal Kopan at Politico, and is happy to use his knowledge of what happened in the Nixon Administration, which was…
Collettivo T. Monk del conservatorio Verdi di Milano—“Let’s Cool One”
https://youtu.be/IJSxVDFEy8M Dario Trapani, Guitar, Arrangements and Conductor; Simone Maggi, Trumpet; Paolo Lo Polito, Alto Sax; Nicolò Ricci, Tenor Sax; Rudi Manzoli, Tenor Sax; Andrea Baronchelli, Trombone; Giovanni Agosti, Piano; Marco Rottoli, Double Bass; Riccardo Chiaberta, Drums. Posted by Dario Trapani.