Should being the editor of the Harvard Law Review be a disqualifier for the presidency? One can wonder. A couple of years ago, when pressed on the point of his administration’s disgraceful mistreatment of alleged (and certainly probable) mega-leaker Bradley Manning, the president had this to say: “I have to abide by certain classified information,”…
Don’t Know Much About Communist Spies
Several months ago, in a posting at the American Conservative, bearing the snappy title “Our American Pravda,” Ron Unz bemoaned the many failings of the American media, claiming that, among other things, the media had conspired to conceal the fact that communist penetration of the federal government was rife during the Roosevelt Administration, “Over the…
Oy, those crafty country folk!
Aviva Shen of ClimateProgress notes a distinct lack of progress in programs designed to encourage farmers to conserve water. Shen points us to a New York Times story by Ron Nixon, “Farm Subsidies Leading to More Water Use,” which gives us the inside skinny: Millions of dollars in farm subsidies for irrigation equipment aimed at…
Emily Bazelon, treading lightly
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…