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Joe Blunt on How’s that lesser evil thing working out?
Thomas Ray Worley on National Popular Vote vs. fixing the electoral college
Dan on County Council’s retreat loses respect — and Busboys
Thomas Nephew on From sundown towns to a midnight county
Bruce Godfrey on From sundown towns to a midnight county
Thomas Nephew on Were recalls the way to go?
ballgame on Were recalls the way to go?
Thomas Nephew on Were recalls the way to go?
Mary Ray Worley on Were recalls the way to go?
Thomas Nephew on Were recalls the way to go?
Mary Ray Worley on Were recalls the way to go?
Maddie on Pact with the devil? Hmm.

Corruption in Iraq: 'Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don't pay' (Abdul-Ahad, Guardian)

Iraq ten years after: instead of one Saddam, many little ones. "Yassir was detained in 2007. For three years she heard nothing of him and assumed he was dead like his brothers. Then one day she took a phone call from an officer who said she could go to visit him if she paid a bribe. She borrowed the money from her neighbour and set off for the prison. "We waited until they brought him," she said. "His hands and legs were tied in metal chains like a criminal. I didn't know him from the torture. He wasn't my son, he was someone else.""

Corrupt Obama Administration Pressuring New York Attorney General to Support Mortgage Whitewash (naked capitalism)

Constitutional Amendment Not Needed: Congress Already Has a Remedy (Leas, Truthout)

"Here is the provision the founding fathers included: The Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact with such Exceptions and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make (US Constitution, Article III, Section 2)." Jurisdiction-stripping -- not just for conservatives any more? Not sure I like the idea of this being a permanent political football, but the option is Good To Know About.

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free (Turley, WaPo)

"In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves? While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian."

What If Obama Loses? (Bernstein/Lithwick/others, Wash.Mthly)

"...we asked a distinguished group of reporters and scholars to think through the hitherto unthinkable: What if one of these people actually wins? "

Wrong Reaction (Gourevitch, Jacobin)

A review of a review, in which Gourevitch fairly annihilates Lilla's NYRB dismissal of Corey Robin's "The Reactionary Mind."

A Christmas Message From America's Rich (Taibbi, Rolling Stone)

"Most of us 99-percenters couldn’t even let our dogs leave a dump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It's called having a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us could get away with doing, we just don’t do them, because, well, we live here. Most of us wouldn’t take a million dollars to swindle the local school system, or put our next door neighbors out on the street with a robosigned foreclosure, or steal the life’s savings of some old pensioner down the block by selling him a bunch of worthless securities. But our Too-Big-To-Fail banks unhesitatingly take billions in bailout money and then turn right around and finance the export of jobs to new locations in China and India."

The Party’s Over (Taylor Marsh)

"Obama has helped Democrats deliver a climate that this party has threatened since the ’70s would happen if I didn’t vote for them."

The Obama Administration and International Law (Koh, Annual Mtg. of Am.Soc.Intl.Law, 2010)

"Since this is my first chance to address you as Legal Adviser, I thought I would speak to three issues. First, the nature of my job as Legal Adviser. Second, to discuss the strategic vision of international law that we in the Obama Administration are attempting to implement. Third and finally, to discuss particular issues that we have grappled with in our first year in a number of high-profile areas: the International Criminal Court, the Human Rights Council, and what I call The Law of 9/11: detentions, use of force, and prosecutions."

Occupy Des Moines is the Democrats' problem - Occupy Wall Street - Salon.com

The Detainee Provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (Lederman, Balkinization)

"There's been a great deal of debate, confusion and simple misrepresentation concerning what, exactly, the detainee provisions say and what effect they'll have. With Steve Vladeck, I've posted some of my own observations about the new legislation, in two parts, at Opinio Juris." (also links to Obama signing statement)

Detainee Provisions in the National Defense Authorization Bills (Else/Garcia, CRS, 11/18/11)

Congressional Research Service: "This report offers a brief background of the salient issues raised by H.R. 1540 and S. 1867 regarding detention matters, provides a section-by-section analysis of the relevant subdivision of each bill, and compares the bills’ approaches with respect to the major issues they address."

Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals (Stoller, "naked capitalism")

Very interesting essay. "Now of course, Ron Paul pandered to racists, and there is no doubt that this is a legitimate political issue in the Presidential race. But the intellectual challenge that Ron Paul presents ultimately has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with contradictions within modern liberalism." Stoller says the liberal blind spot is how interconnected warmaking is with central banking; Paul gets that and focuses on it, liberals don't. The question for me is whether centrally financed social spending must be a seedbed for war spending; doesn't seem that way in Europe.

New Year’s Eve News Dump: Obama Signs Defense Authorization Bill (Dayen, FDL)

Yes, much of this was practice already; what’s new is to have Congressional blessing, which (as I understand it) +/- immunizes these policies against one kind of challenge (exec. overreach) under the key SCOTUS Youngstown Sheet & Tube decision back in the 50s.

The Cheney Fallacy (Goldsmith, The New Republic. 2009)

"But there is a different problem with Cheney's criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. "

BP oil spill live feed

Posted by Thomas Nephew on May 27th, 2010

Via PBS. Crossing my fingers they’ll succeed with their “top kill.” Meanwhile, here’s a look at the catastrophe for Lousiana marshlands, via Al Jazeera: