Schumer: “I was going to ask you, Judge Alito, why you think—and please, let’s dispense with all these so-called ‘qualifications’, references to ‘relevant context’, or invocations of ‘attendant legal precedence’—I was going to ask you , sir, why you believe that the Constitution does not allow a young girl who’s been brutally raped by her White Trash Pappy the legal availability of an abortion? Is it because you hate women,
January 11, 2006
January 11, 2006
More NSA wrangling: a fresh(er) perspective
Some interesting discussion spun off from my recent post on “The Wisdom of Wiretaps”—a few responses (in the form of an exchange) I’d like to highlight here. First, here’s Tom Ault, who takes the tack of dividing the NSA “domestic spying” question into competing impulses / questions—one having to do with the program’s legality, the other having to do with the pragmatic nature of the program, from the standpoint of
January 11, 2006
The new, less “pedantic” protein wisdom: post number 3
I really do love “The Rockford Files,” but I can’t help be think that if they made the show today, Jim would be played by David Caruso—and instead of a shiny gold Firebird, he’d be driving a tricked out Hummer with bullet-proof glass and an entire portable crime lab set up in the back. And Angel? They’d probably make him a chick—a doe-eyed 25-year old former exotic dancer with a
January 11, 2006
Chimpy McHitlerburton’s smirky rodeo ride through history: 18
From AFP, “Afghans reject bin Laden, want more peacekeepers : poll”: Huge majorities of Afghans reject Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, approve the US military role in their country and are grateful to international bodies like the United Nations. The survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland also found strong support for President Hamid Karzai. “Clearly this (poll) is a positive portent for the
January 11, 2006
If a Cedar tree falls in the Syrian forest, and the only person there to hear it is a Special Forces soldier directing an air strike with GPS tracking equipment and an unmanned aerial drone, does it make a sound? Or does it just, y’know, kinda leave pulp and a little pencil-thin mustache?
From the Telegraph (UK): President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secretly incited Iraq’s top Shia leader to declare holy war against US and British forces, according to Washington’s former administrator in the country. In his new book, My Year in Iraq, Paul Bremer said he heard the explosive intelligence in October 2003 as sectarian tensions soared across the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. The report came from an extremely