The Hall of Fire

I'm not sure how fragile they really are, considering that on Monday the Fourth Circuit (generally the most conservative of all the Courts of Appeal) smacked down the White House' claimed power to detain noncitizens in the US without trial or habeas. There remains a tremendous strength in the Consti...

Sad but true. There was a rare convergence in the mid-nineties with a DLC President and Gingrich' budget hawks on the Hill (as well as a nice fat 'peace dividend' to spend: the gutting of the military at that time is still having very ill effects today). Unfortunately the Republican Party has been l...

I think that westerners, that have relied on writing things down for so long, have a negative impression of an oral tradition that is not entirely accurate. We tend to think of it as sort of like a game of "telephone" when one person whispers something in the ear of another, who then whis...

I have infinite trust in the capacity of the US Government to waste money and run up huge deficits no matter who's in the White House :( The FEMA fiasco does bring into high relief one of the very worst aspects of the George II administration- the appointment of unqualified but ideologically correct...

Certainly or very real physical well-bing is endangered by the hideous fact that, for now, our friends fear us and our enemies don't.

To our reputation? Agreed. To our well-being? I can't see that Dubyuh has done much damage. Except for taking a dive in the Microsoft antitrust case.

Is anyone besides me rather disturbed by the tone of the press hype surrounding this discovery? While this is undoubtedly the most exciting find in years to a small community of specialist scholars, the press seems to be unaware of or purposefully reticent about GJ's context: no mention at all in mo...

My almanac tells me that today Zanzibar (which is the "zan" in Tanzania) is now 99% Muslim. That might be why the Mercurys (if that was their name) went to England. On the whole, however, East African Muslims tend to be far less -er - pushy about their Deen than their South Asian brethren.

While it's ridiculous to deny the accomplishments of Mali, it's I think a disservice to exaggerate them beyond a certain point. Most people don't know that from the 13th to 16th Century, the Mali Empire was both more powerful, and more culturally sophisticated, than any kingdom in Europe. Say what? ...

Bush won't even be impeached. He'll be convicted by history

Aside from stupidity, of what?

Granted most of the formerly-colonial world had trading and mercantile structures before the Europeans came. But it's hardly the case that they can be restored today- and even at the time foreign middlemen were often the essential factors. A very great part of the trade of sub-Saharan Africa was con...

If the US were brought to trial for "shock and awe" against Iraq, I honestly don't know what the outcome would be. Presumably US attorneys would make their best case that Iraq had participated in the aggression of 9/11, or that the administration honestly thought so. It is not clear at al...

Jn: I'm fully aware that a mean or median doesn't by itself say anything about the range of deviation in the population. But I wouldn't join you in jettisoning p. c. income (or GDP p. c.) as "meaningless." They do represent a very useful measure of an economy's population-adjusted capacity...

Do you mean to say that Bush wouldn't resign is full Congress were to issue a stiffly worded vote of no confidence? No- this isn't a parliamentary system. The President is elected by the Electoral College, representing the several States, and does not depend on a legislative majority like a Prime M...

A very great part of the 'magic' is the sense that there is far, far more beyond the canvas, that the Tree is just the foreground. Like T himself, I find the suggestion of untold stories to be moving. Perhaps Hobbits are the ideal intermediaries precisely because they are very small people in a huge...

I would remind you that the Constitution expressly grants Congress the right to suspend habeas corpus in time of war. To my knowledge, however, Congress has *not* exercised that power. What it has done is to clarify the non-applicability of habeas to foreign citizens abroad. Citizen terrorists like ...

When the US declined to sign the Hague treaty, Clinton was President (iirc) and there was no thought at that point in time that a US administration would ever be accused of war crimes as such. Oh yes there was, and it was much discussed at the time. The fear was precisely that American officials or...

Yes, TR (with Congress) did all those things- but only within the limits imposed by Article I, Section 8.

The US of course don't acknowledge the jurisdiction of Den Haag, and they have refused to try Rumsfeld & co. for war crimes in his own country. It is therefore, according to international law, possible to try to have these alleged crimes tried elsewhere. Again, political show trials. What bette...

I think punishing Plame (and Wilson) was a very big motive. Where Wilson really drew the ire of Cheney & Co was not in his report itself, but in his very public NYT Op-Ed (midlevel government types just don't do that sort of thing and expect no consequences). I may not remember the timeline corr...