by Mike Kimel GW is a Smart Man A few days ago, Keith Hennessey, who worked in GW Bush’s administration, wrote that the former president is a very smart man. Now, a smart person doesn’t have to be smart at everything. There are plenty of examples of very smart people doing very stupid things, particularly […]
by Linda Beale Fixing Sequestration (for the rich only) Once again, Congress has demonstrated that it notices mostly what affects rich people and can’t quite identify with ordinary Americans. And that it will not pass either spending laws or tax laws (which include a wealth of spending laws through the tax expenditure mechanism) that equitably […]
Yves Smith will be on Harry Shearer’s Le Show today (Sunday), originating at 1 pm ET live on many public radio stations, and aired on many others throughout the day. Good streams are available all day, each hour, at publicradiofan.com. The topic is the Independent Foreclosure Review fiasco. (check local listings here…)
When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night, the celebration was instantly overtaken by an ideologically charged debate. Liberals argued that the government must respect Tsarnaev’s constitutional rights, by which they meant that he should be treated the same as any ordinary criminal suspect—informed of his Miranda rights, supplied with a lawyer, presented to court as […]
The two immediate what-everyone’s-talking-about legal issues in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev case concern his Miranda rights–that is, at what point must he be read his Miranda rights notifying him that he has the right to remain silent and to the counsel of an attorney–and whether he can, and if so should, be classified as an enemy […]
Re-posted from last year is Dan Becker’s post: Due Process: Holder vs Colbert. Art or Reality. Choose. This is the object: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury,… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due […]
Reader Matthew McOsker sends a note pointing us to 2004 and reading for context: Who are the Boston Marathon terrorists? Some early reports state the men are Chechen. So where does Chechnya fit into global terrorism? I found the following piece that gives a nice summary: ” On September 1, 2004, a group of Chechen […]
by Mike Kimel Reagan and Rios Montt: The Company You Keep Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt is on trial for genocide. I was born in the US, but my formative years were spent in South America in the 1980s. That the right wing Guatamelan military dictatorship was massacring unarmed civilians on a large scale […]
With constant delays due to significant engineering issues and design flaws, the cost of the F-35 has risen to $395.7 billion. But that’s just to build the planes. When you add in the cost of testing, operations and support, it will cost an additional $1.1 trillion — bringing the overall price tag to an incomprehensible […]
It’s official: President Obama has proposed cutting Social Security by replacing the program’s current inflation adjustment with the stingier “chained” Consumer Price Index. As I’ve discussed before, this risks undoing all the progress made against senior poverty since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. 25% of seniors were poor according to official poverty […]