The Big Picture and the Closeup

What were they thinking when they passed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?” Here’s what. And it was just as wrong then as it is now.

Do we want our presidents empowered to imprison people simply for their beliefs?

So it is far from clear that, even if the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by uniformed military, these would have been war crimes. It is, however, beyond doubt a violation of U.S. and New York State criminal law for civilians to attack skyscrapers with airplanes.

Print journalism is not disappearing; it’s just being put on retainer (and a short leash) by private interests.

It is tempting to view the stories told in [Eric] Boehlert’s two books, one chronicling the failure of the mainstream media to report the news and the other revealing the success of the blogs in doing so, as being parts of the same story. Maybe the mainstream media would not be failing from a business perspective were they not, most of the time, failing from a news-reporting perspective as well. Maybe the blogs would not be succeeding, albeit under their mostly profit-agnostic criteria, were they not beginning to seize the standard of bona fide reporting falling from the grasp of the mainstream media as they tumble lifeless upon the field of economic battle.

What the Client Wanted To Hear               First, so the official story has gone, there were the lawyers, people with names like John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury.  Consulted by their clients in the Oval Office, the CIA, the Pentagon and the Vice President’s Office about whether Muslim men could be imprisoned without […]

Just Following Orders   [I]t can never be maintained that a military officer can justify himself for doing an unlawful act, by producing the order of his superior. Chief Justice Taney, Mitchell v. Harmony, 54 U.S. 115, 137 (1851)[1]              Last time, we started with the premise that the MPs who abused the detainees […]

 “A Few Bad Apples”               On October 19, 2003,[1]  Specialist Sabrina Harman of the 372nd Military Police Company picked up a Sony Cybershot camera and began taking photographs of life on Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib prison.  She documented naked prisoners being stacked like cordwood, prisoners being threatened by attack dogs, hooded prisoners, beaten […]

Various Circles of Hell Jack L. B. Gohn               Because of the agonizingly slow leakage of information concerning the previous administration’s practices of internment and interrogation of Muslim men, it is only recently that the Central Intelligence Agency component has come into focus.               When the Abu Ghraib photos were first leaked to […]

Laudator Temporis Acti (“One Who Praises Bygone Times”) Horace, Ars Poetica The Times, they are definitely bygone, or, if not bygone, doggone near bygone. The Seattle Times and the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Los Angeles Times and The Roanoke Times and The St. Petersburg Times and all the other Timeses, Intelligencers, Posts, Standards, Newses, Courants […]