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Category Archives: Creeping Totalitarianism

From little rotten acorns, rotten oaks are grown

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

This is a story about what happens when one branch of our government relinquishes its proper role in the name of national security. In 1948 an Air Force plane crashed. A number of people were killed, including some civilian employees of RCA. Their family members sued the Air Force for negligence, and asked for a […]

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Obama does bad

Friday, January 23, 2009

Yesterday I noted that Obama had done a great thing in dismantling a portion of the Bush cloak of secrecy be repealing Bush’s executive order on presidential records. Today, I’m sorry to report (you won’t see much about this in the press, I would suspect) that he has taken a huge step down the Bushian […]

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Holding up Holder

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

A short time ago I expressed some cautious optimism about the possibility that the Obama administration might go after the torturers. My basic argument was that a flat out declaration of intent to do so would give Bush the cover to pardon his henchman, on the grounds that any such prosecutions would be political harassment, […]

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Where is Obama going on torture and war crimes

Monday, January 12, 2009

Most commentators I’ve read interpret Obama’s statements yesterday regarding torture, in response to a question from George Stephanopoulos, pretty much put paid to any notion that an Obama government will go after the evildoers. That’s likely true, but we shouldn’t give up hope quite yet. Here’s the exchange: OBAMA: We’re still evaluating how we’re going […]

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Unmitigated gall

Monday, January 5, 2009

It’s hard to decide which is more egregious: the gall of John Yoo and John Bolton warning Barack Obama to stay within the constitutional limitations of the presidency, or the outrageousness of the New York Times decision to give these two fascists a platform. I have said on numerous occasions that both the courts and […]

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Russ Feingold wants to restore the rule of law

Friday, November 14, 2008

This is one of the many reasons why an Obama victory was so important. Adam Cohen writes in the New York Times (Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law): In a Senate hearing room in September, weeks before Barack Obama won the election, a series of law professors, lawyers and civil libertarians […]

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Censorship

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Via Americablog, yet again. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZII0GjcJMus[/youtube] Librarians have been silent heroes in a lot of ways over the course of the last seven years. They resisted the Patriot Act’s Big Brother is Watching provisions requiring disclosure of library patron reading habits, and they have consistently opposed attempts at book banning of the type Palin was contemplating. […]

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Impeach him now

Friday, August 15, 2008

We have had no access to the net, and we haven’t read the papers much, since we got her to VT. A couple of days ago we gathered from the front page of a newspaper that Bush was planning on sending troops to Georgia. It seems we have critical interests there, as we do in […]

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Yawn! Another impeachable offense. I’ve lost count

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Is anyone surprised at the news that Bush told the CIA to forge a letter linking Saddam to Al Qaeda? I’d be more suprised if someone had established as fact that he hadn’t done it. Here’s another surprise. The Democrats will tut-tut and do nothing. I suppose an argument can be made that, at this […]

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A moment’s silence for the Constitution

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

September 17, 1787 to July 9, 2008.

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