Bending the truth in the service of intelligence gathering is as old as spycraft itself, and the history of the CIA right into the new millennium is littered with such instances. But it is worth noting on the 95th anniversary of William J. Casey’s birth that some of this deeply troubled agency’s most intractable problems can be traced to this man who was so addicted to lying that he rarely told the truth to anyone, especially the people who needed to know it like the president of the...

The tactic is now well tested: A Hillary Clinton surrogate spouts something over the top and typically race laced about Barack Obama, Clinton looks the other way for a few days while the surrogate’s snark percolates in the media, and then when enough mud has stuck, she belatedly issues a statement of regret, repudiation and rejection. And so it was yet again with L’affaire Ferraro. In a campaign when the news keeps coming 24/7, nearly a week transpired from the time that Geraldine Ferraro...

I’M NOT A BEATNIK, I’M A CATHOLIC — JACK KEROUAC Like a lot of college kids who came of age in the Sixties, reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was a rite of passage for me, one that occurred a few days into my freshman year when my considerably more sophisticated dormitory roommate loaned me his dog-eared copy. I caught the Kerouac bug so bad that I went on to read virtually everything he wrote after tracking down a last few obscure titles in the early 1970s, when I was...

With the Mann Act in the news courtesy of now former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, it seems appropriate to reprise the story of Jack Johnson and one of the most pernicious political prosecutions in American history. Johnson, nicknamed the “Galveston Giant” for his Texas hometown and imposing size, arguably was the best heavyweight boxer of his generation. As the first black heavyweight champion of the world, a title he held from 1908-1915, Johnson became the most famous and became...

It is ironic that allegations that Hillary Clinton is running a racist campaign have reached a fever pitch as the black voters of the state of Mississippi — where so much blood was spilled in the American civil-rights movement — handed Barack Obama a 61 to 37 percentage point victory yesterday in the last primary until the big Pennsylvania smackdown six weeks hence. Let’s be clear: I don’t think Clinton or her mouthpieces are racist, they’re just trapped in a web of...

We all know that the news media is breathlessly waiting for the other shoe to drop in Albany, but there is other big news today and I hope you’re sitting down as you read this: The Pentagon has concluded that there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. In Pentagon-speak, there were no “operational links” between the bad man and the bad terror group found in a review of hundreds of thousands of captured Iraqi documents, which effectively undermines one of the biggest...

While out riding my trail bike this morning I encountered a Little Green Man who was anxious to quiz an Earthling about the Eliot Spitzer scandal. Q: Why is this such a big deal? A: Because people love to see politicians get tripped up, especially other politicians. Q: On my planet everyone pays for sex. A: Hmm. Interesting. Q: So your leaders punish people for paying for sex? A: Sometimes, although in this instance Spitzer inadvertently led the government to a prostitution ring because of his alleged...

And so after enough “turning the corner” spin to level a small city, endless speculating over how many Republicans limbaughed over to vote for her and the effect that a most excellently timed “Saturday Night Live” appearance might have had, Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up a mere four delegates after the five primaries and caucuses last week and will lose more than that today in Mississippi. That’s right, sports fans, four delegates. This reality check seemed sure to...

Does Hillary Clinton’s embrace of destructive, divisive and dirty politics matter? If all you care about is her winning the Democratic nomination no matter what it takes, then I suppose not. But if you’re tired of the politics of the Age of Bush and Rove, including the secrecy and fear mongering, and are thirsting for leaders who take the high road, then it certainly does. Some examples of where the win-at-all-costs Clinton campaign has chosen to go:

I’m not a superstitious guy by nature, but how can I not help but believe that there was a Curse of the Grateful Dead Keyboardists? Four of the Dead’s six keyboard players died of causes other than stage fright: Vince Welnick, a 2006 suicide; Keith Godchaux, a heroin addict who died in a 1980 car crash; Brent Mydland, who succumbed to a drug overdose in 1990, and Ronald “Pigpen” McKernan, whose liver packed in 35 years ago today at the tender age of 27. McKernan was on board...

In an act of abject cowardice, President Bush has vetoed a bipartisan bill prohibiting waterboarding and other Al Qaeda-esque interrogation techniques not in a public appearance surrouded by aides and supporters, but behind closed doors. The action was announced in his weekly radio address this morning, a favorite of sycophantic shut-ins. Beyond being yet another power grab, the veto allowing the CIA broad latitude in how it treats terror suspects — something prohibited by the U.S. military...

When the dot.com bubble burst with the coming of the new millennium, the reasons were pretty obvious – a combination of ridiculously high stock prices, rampant speculation, zillions of dollars in available venture capital and giving the finger to traditional business models that sent many a company and investor on a binge that a drunken sailor would envy. What’s going on now as the effects of the subprime mortgage and hedge fund disasters ripple through the economy like the venom from a...

. . . which insult is worse? A Barack Obama aide calling Hillary Clinton “a monster” or a Clinton aide calling Obama a reincarnation of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr? Before you try to answer the question, consider that the Obama aide apologized and resigned while the Clinton aide ain’t going nowhere because Hillary’s campaign plays by its own rules. This includes the refusal of the candidate and her hubbo to release financial records like Obama and John McCain have — which prompted...

JUST ASKING.

I had wanted to wait until we got a little closer to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 to discuss and diss a state in which I have lived, worked and traveled at various times for many years, but the mainstream media will soon be encamping there and I should get in my two cent’s worth before Wolf Blitzer starts interviewing shy Amish folk, brawny coal miners and flatulent cows. The conventional wisdom is that the Keystone State is tailor made for Hillary Clinton. This is because it has droves...

ANY GUESSES?

Now that Hillary Clinton says that her campaign “has turned the corner,” it’s time for she and Bill Clinton to turn one of their own and come clean about their financial holdings as have Barack Obama and John McCain. The only reason for not releasing their tax returns is not the bureaucratic gobbledygook that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign claims is the hang-up, but because she and The Mister have something to hide — be it insider business dealings, questionable stock trades,...

It has taken no time at all to understand that in his own way Attorney General Michael Mukasey is even worse than Alberto Gonzalez. That is because he is more clever than Gonzo in doing the White House’s bidding, which is to say suborning the law at every opportunity. Law school prof Jonathan Turley has reached a not dissimilar conclusion in writing in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece that: “The recent decisions of . . . Mukasey to block any prosecution of Bush administration officials...

Despite her primary wins yesterday, Hillary Clinton faces insurmountable odds against having enough convention delegates to win the nomination unless she resorts to destructive backroom arm twisting and dirty dealing to try to get over the top. While Clinton is right to declare that it’s not over until it’s over, she did recapture some of her base in yesterday’s contests and her showing in Ohio was impressive, it is indeed over. The sooner that she can fashion a graceful exit the...

As the enormous costs in blood and money of the Iraq war come into ever sharper focus, it is worth pondering what the electoral landscape would have been like this winter were there not still 150,000 U.S. troops slogging away on a fool’s mission that has no end in sight. One thing is certain: Even a modest infusion of the money diverted for the war into jobs and infrastructure improvement projects in blighted Ohio — say a couple hundred million bucks or so — might have made a difference...

When I was a kid I had a toy Simplex typewriter like this one, albeit a few years newer. It was a great rainy day diversion and held me in good stead when I graduated to my first real typewriter a few years later. Alas, the typewriter is going the way of the buggy whip and on the very rare occasions that I hear its “tap, tap, tap” it stops me dead in my tracks. Richard Polt offers A Phenomenology of Early Typewriters, a delightfully informative diversion on this nail-biting primary...

Oil prices today passed their all time, inflation-adjusted record, flirting with $104 a barrel. Barry Ritholtz, for one, thinks that this commodity has legs.

Charlotte Allen has unleashed a spitstorm with publication in the Washington Post of an op-ed piece in which she asserts that women are . . . well, dummies. While the piece itself is amazingly dumb, I was struck by the reaction of the feminist bloggers whom I sampled who to a woman didn’t bother to offer intelligent point-counterpoint responses to the piece but instead engaged in name calling. Zuzu, for example, said that the “mainstream media hates women,” while Jessica grumped...

For not entirely altruistic reasons – including a mix of over stimulation and exhaustion — I hope that when the sun comes up on Wednesday morning Hillary Clinton will have seen the light and is heading home to Chappaqua with with Bill and Chelsea. The mathematical chances of Clinton taking the Democratic nomination away from Barack Obama without huge victories in both Texas and Ohio tomorrow are slim to none depending upon how you do the math. Some 35 primaries and caucuses and 20 debates...