The Hall of Fire

Well, she has serviced many members of the public....

Not to mention her long career of public service....

What amazes me (again) is the remarkable stupidity of the Bushies. If they really were ticked at V. Plame for insinuating her anti-admin husband into the Niger junket, she could have been dealt with completely legally. Just a word to the DCI and she would have found herself Station Chief in Adak, We...

Parsis are still present and practising their religion in India, even today. But they are very few in number, and dwindling Many Indian and Pakistani Parsis, under pressure from less-ecumenical Muslim neighbors, emigrated to Zanzibar off East Africa, where there is a fair-sized community today. It ...

An advantage that the Parliamentary system has over the (particularly American) Presidential one is that you don’t need to be swimming in money to end up running the country, nor do you need to campaign for over a year and win a lot of primary elections But that wretched state of affairs just happe...

his very detailed knowledge of the plot to reveal it.

This suggests that there was such a plot, and Scooter had detailed knowledge thereof. Are you privy to information the rest of us aren't BT?

The US presidency was based around the powers of the 18th century British monarch, unfortunately without the vigour and independence of the 18th century British parliament. No, the US President has never possessed the power of absolute and final veto enjoyed by George III and his predecessors. And ...

Ax, A great deal of it has to do with the fact that many Asian countries had long histories of settled societies, with the foundations of civil service, jurisprudence, literacy and so forth. The real fault of the West in the crumbling parts of the developing world doesn't lie with Evil Corporate Exp...

Also, I must say I have no clue what you mean by "political show-trials of US officials". The Federal Prosecutor in Karlruhe has filed chrges of war crimes aginst Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and several others. On what conceivable jurisdiction this is based I don't know. To be frank...

But what after this? Libby is being convicted of lying to the CIA and the Grand Jury - so he lied. Which means the truth is that he had orders to give out Valerie Wilson's identity. What about those orders? What about the President from whom these orders came? A doesn't follow from B. Libbie was co...

I'm not sure what exactly it is the demonstrators want. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems they want third-world peoples

a) to remain indefinitely in a Rousseauvian state of nature, without economic development; or

b) to cheerfully adopt the oh-so-successful Cuban economic model

Yes- we became a world power.

Of course, Germany hasn't been very friendly to us just lately either. Maybe if the Merckel government stopped staging political show-trials of US officials, and honored our extradition requests, and permitted their troops in Afghanistan to actually, you know, like, fight, relations might be a tad w...

Just a couple of generations?

Where was the critical analysis of the obvious-if-one-bothered-to-LOOK fabrication of the case for the Iraq War? CNN, CBS and the like were beating the drums right along with Murdoch's minions. Part of the problem of course was the mob-momentum that can get going- in the wake of 9/11 the public sim...

Re Truman- appropos of the Presidential/Parliamentary thread- a Prime Minister Truman could never have done it.

What I'm yearning for is a strong, intelligent leader, who will do what is right, even if it hurts him/her politically. One who does not care for a legacy, one who does not care for reelection, but one who will do what is best for the country. Problem is, if you subtract the "intelligent"...

I think the Internet or any breakup of the media oligarchy has to be good in the long run. If nothing else, it's tearing up the flimsy fiction that mainstream news was 'objective' and 'unbiased.' It never was, because no human being is. Once upon a time, every decent-sized city had a Democratic news...

Ax, it's from Anatole France.

The assertion that non-citizens don't deserve constitutional protections would come as a shock to some of my friends who are decades-long U.S. residents, married to citizens, parents of citizens, but not citizens themselves. And it comes as a shock to me. Sorry- I should have been clearer. I meant ...