George W. Bush

  • You must absolutely read this fascinating account by a lawyer suing the U.S. Government for disregarding FISA in its electronic surveillance program. Usually, these cases die before they begin because the plaintiffs can't prove that they were surveilled without revealing State secrets, but in this case the government mistakenly released a document proving that the plaintiffs were wiretapped outside of FISA. This leads to a fascinating look into the legal process of fighting illegal wiretaps:
    In June of 2007, the DOJ attorneys filed two opening briefs in the 9th Circuit. One brief was publicly available, to which we would be allowed to file a publicly available responsive brief. The other was filed in secret, under seal, for the judge's eyes only. The bad news for us was that we would not be permitted to see the government's secret brief; the (sort of) good news was that we could file our own secret brief in response. Rebutting arguments you've not been allowed to see is a talent that isn't taught in law school.
    Straight outta Kafka. (22) #
    7/9/2008
  • Now that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has full archives online, I was able to go back and find one of my favorite low-brow moments from August 3, 2000. (It starts at about 2:17.) (15) #
    1/22/2008
  • The commutation of Libby's sentence sums up the Bush administration in a nutshell: unequal justice, secrecy coupled with transparent cover-ups, the unethical charade to justify the Iraq war, and a disregard for the law when convenient. Andrew Sullivan has been covering this relentlessly, and if you aren't angry at this yet (and were not already), get reading. (25) #
    7/3/2007
  • Is it me, or does this front page CNN headline, lede, and sidebar seem like it was written in the style of The Onion?
    Chavez on CNN
    Chavez on CNN 2
    (16) #
    9/20/2006

Michael Brown: "Yes, I was a crony..."

Former FEMA director Michael Brown was on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO last night, looking confident after finally getting a week of semi-positive coverage in the media. Bill directly asked him if he was a crony, and his answer can be seen in this post's title, admittedly with the "as far as" context removed. Six months later, and Brown is looking a lot better, and Bush a lot worse.

Sat, 03/04/2006 - 7:58pm
  • If you're not sure whether Bush violated federal law by authorizing the NSA wiretap program, this post will clear things up. There are some questions that need to be answered here, such as why the New York Times waited a year until publishing this story, and why Bush circumvented the FISA act, which already gave him the power of warrantless surveillance in broad situations. (2) #
    12/20/2005

Napolean W. Bonaparte

Napoleon W. Bonaparte

"In political measures we ought never to recede, never to retrograde, never to admit ourselves to be wrong ... even when in error we ought to persist in it, in order to have the appearance of being in the right."

-Napoleon, as quoted in Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down (v.4, p.213).

Fri, 10/14/2005 - 12:31am
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