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Category Archives: Creeping Totalitarianism

The circle closes

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Seldom are the victims (if only the secondary victims) of a conspiracy privileged to watch that conspiracy play out before there very eyes. The entire American people have now been so privileged, as we see the Bush torture conspiracy come to a successful end. It can truly be said that at no time has the […]

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Cheney is guilty, guilty, guilty

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Cheney “defense” to torture is that committing that crime enabled his henchmen to obtain information that “saved lives”. That may be, but probably is not, true. Of course, if we’re going to tote up lives saved, we also have to tote up lives lost to the terrorists our torture tactics created. But today we […]

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Puzzling

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Now that Obama is inching ever so slowly toward prosecuting the torturers in chief, Dick Cheney’s bizarre behavior grows ever more perplexing. One would think that a potential criminal defendant might keep his mouth shut, rather than admitting all the elements of the crime with which he may be charged. Perhaps he should consult with […]

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Not much, but the best we can do

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Jay Bybee, who wrote one of the recently released torture memos, is now a federal judge on the Court of Appeals. That’s one step below the Supreme Court, for anyone who’s counting. Lately there has been a lot of calls for his impeachment, something he would richly deserve. Some members of Congress have even oh-so-cautiously […]

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Torturing the law

Friday, April 17, 2009

I haven’t read all the newly released torture memos. It takes an effort of will to get through them. And I haven’t read the statutory or case law that the authors purport to cite. But I can smell intellectual and lawyerly dishonesty when it gives off this much stench. The stench is particularly offensive if […]

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One step forward, after some steps back

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Like many of his supporters, I was more than disappointed when Obama, through his “Justice” Department, took a legal position in favor of unlimited presidential power to wiretap. It was a sad day for the country, and we on the left have put principle over person by loudly disapproving. Today, Eric Holder and his department […]

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Obama out-Bushes Bush

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Yet another demonstration of how important it is for those of us on the rational side of the spectrum to avoid the cult of personality that we endured for eight years during the Bush era. The Obama administration has taken an even more extreme position regarding government wiretaps than that taken by the Bushies. Not […]

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Something to keep an eye on

Monday, February 16, 2009

It is a sad fact that the Obama administration has not been sufficiently aggressive about going after the criminals that ran the last Administration. What’s even more worrisome is the possibility that it will actively assist the ongoing obstruction of justice and contempt of our constitutional system. Latest possible example: The Obama administration is asking […]

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Waterboarding the least of it?

Monday, February 9, 2009

This is one of those stories that you have to hope isn’t true, while more or less assuming that it is. Via Firedoglake from the London Daily Telegraph, writing about evidence that the British government has attempted to suppress: A British official, who is regularly briefed on intelligence operations, said: “The concern was that the […]

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Speculative history

Thursday, January 29, 2009

A little exercise in alternative history. What if Gerald Ford had not pardoned Nixon, and that presidential crook had done some hard time? What lessons did Ford’s deputies, Cheney and Rumsfeld, learn from that little episode and what would they have learned, instead, had Nixon gone to jail. And, oddly enough, given the widespread notion […]

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