Under the American legal system, there are appropriately few exceptions to the principle that a lawsuit must include the real name of the plaintiff – and that the accused be allowed to face their accuser in court. The exceptions under which plaintiffs can file suit under a pseudonym usually include sexual abuse, which has been the case in a number of lawsuits against Roman Catholic archdioceses, as well as mental illness, personal safety and abandoned children. But in a disturbing end run...

Rudy Giuliani will not be the Republican presidential nominee for a number of reasons (too moderate, too many sleazy friends and anger-management problems, to name but three), but the biggest reason is that he is a one-trick pony and the harder you look at his post-9/11 leadership as New York City mayor, the more cracks appear. The New York Times opens up a canyon of a crack today in a story that says much of the blame for the epidemic of a severe respiratory disease suffered by Ground Zero clean-up...

As turning points go, last week was a humdinger. There was the sight of all the rats — congressfolk and commentators alike — jumping from the sinking ship that is the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy, the pleas from the president and his enablers to stay the course drowned out by the clamor for the lifeboats. With the ship taking on major water and the lifeboats filling up, it seems appropriate to take stock of where we’ve been, where we are and, most importantly, where...

After being repeatedly embarrassed over the shabby treatment of returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans in the military and Veterans Administration health-care systems, the White House is surely hoping that you and I have short memories. This is because the president, who has run up $3 trillion in new debt on his watch, is threatening to veto a spending bill that includes an increase in funding for veterans’ physical and mental health-care needs. More here.

It is a telling commentary on the catastrophe that the Iraq war has become and the damage it has done to the military that several retired generals have gone public to harshly rebuke former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush. Now three of the generals are challenging a dozen members of Congress in a new TV commercial by VoteVets.org, saying the politicians can’t support the president’s Iraq policy and expect to win re-election. Says retired Major General John Batiste: I am...

Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice! — From “Alice in Wonderland” The House has approved a second Iraq war-funding bill that President Bush has vowed to veto. Let’s put this latest development into perspective: The president violated a fundamental law of economics in lowering taxes while commencing to fight a major war, which happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and has taken many...

“La Justice Caricaturée” by Robert LeVigan My occasional penchant for hyperbole duly noted, the suspension of habeas corpus is the single most destructive thing that the Bush administration (and a compliant Congress) have done over the last six-plus years, and that’s saying a lot considering that war thingie. For too many Americans, the suspension of certain civil liberties after the 9/11 attacks has been an abstraction, something that applies only to people with funny headgear...

Way back in 2000 when the world was just a wee bit less crazy, Secretary of State-in-waiting Condoleezza Rice was a member of Chevron’s board of directors and head of its public policy committee, which oversaw areas that could be of potential political concern (which is to say embarrassment) for the giant oil company. That makes the news that Chevron was knowingly paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of the defunct U.N. oil-for-food program all the more ....

MORE HERE.

Theresa Shaw, the chief Department of Education official responsible for overseeing the nation’s scandal-plagued $85 billion student loan industry, has decided to spent more time with her family, bringing to 33 the number of Bush administration officials who have been convicted, copped pleas, indicted or otherwise brought down by scandal. For Republicans with short memories, No. 32 was Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias, who resigned after confirming that he was a customer of a Washington,...

Vice President Cheney wears a protective vest on arrival in Baghdad today T.S. Eliot famously wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” but it may be September for the Bush administration since it increasingly appears that will be when the proverbial finally hits the fan and there is bipartisan agreement that the war in Iraq is lost and it is time to get out. This moment, or month or whatever, has been a long time coming, of course, and it is George Bush himself who drew a line in the...

How seriously should the FBI take a bunch of hard-drinking wannabe blue-collar terrorists who ask cops for maps of military installations, have trouble finding lethal weapons, practice jihadist attacks by playing paintball in the Pocono Mountains, go to a Kinko’s to have a videotape made of their training sessions made into a DVD, are infiltrated by not one but two informants and include a brainiac who knows their eventual target, a wide-open Army base in their own back yard, “like the...

PAINTBALL JIHADIST? Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be considerably more caution in the blogosphere today over the announcement that the feds have arrested six men who were planning to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, than breathless reports yesterday that an explosion in a Las Vegas parking garage was a terrorist attack. That is well and good, because the preliminary reports call to mind those feckless Miami-based terrorist wannabes who were going to take a bus to Chicago...

Ian Paisley speaks as Northern Ireland power-sharing re-commenced The news that once bitter foes joined ranks today as Northern Ireland re-established power sharing should be a cause for celebration at a time when sectarian conflicts, most notably in Palestine and Iraq, seem to be without end. But this watershed event in Belfast leaves this (half) Irishman feeling . . . well, feeling like shaking hands and agreeing to get along is merely a prelude to a lasting peace in the long-troubled province,...

“Under the Great Wave” Hokusai Katsushika (c. 1829) Leon Botstein is a very busy man. When not writing about music or editing books and teaching, he runs Bard College (and has since 1975 when he was elected its president at age 29), as well as recording internationally, conducting the American Symphony Orchestra and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He also is brilliantly erudite, drop-dead funny and could hold his own on a late-night talk show. Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra...

You have to pity people like right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin, who seem to want a terror attack on U.S. soil so badly that they can practically taste it. Malkin was quick to connect a report that an apparent employee of the Luxor hotel-casino in Las Vegas had rolled snake eyes when he picked up a device from atop a car to reports that Al Qaeda has had its fix on the Luxor in the past. She also noted that the 9/11 plotters had visited Las Vegas in the months before the attack. Others dutifully...

I am fond of saying that a public-opinion poll is merely a snapshot in time, but even so this is a dark time indeed for President Bush and the Republican Party. According to a new Newsweek Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low only matched by Jimmy Carter in 1979. Pause for a moment to consider that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush’s approval rating hovered around 95 percent and has fallen so far that he is now put in the same league as a perennial...

The Internet and a small device costing less than $50 have brought the whole wide world of quality radio into our living room. Any radio station worth its salt now webcasts, often in a high-definition format and sometimes through multiple streams. By hard-wiring my computer to my stereo system through a HiFi Link (a more expensive wireless version also is available) I can listen to such superb stations as WBGO (Jazz) in Newark, New Jersey, WXPN (Alternative) in Philadelphia and KJAZ (Jazz) in Long...

The Scottish National party appears to have pulled off an historic coup and has overturned Labor’s 50 year dominance of Scottish politics, clearing the way for a referendum on independence. The SNP became the largest single party in the Scottish parliament, winning 47 seats to Labor’s 46, while the Conservatives won 17 seats and the Liberal Democrats 16. Other parties won three seats. The outcome of the outcome parliamentary election had been in doubt because of widespread reports of...

Familiarity does indeed sometimes breed contempt, but I’ve had a case of the ass lately over Captain Ed Morrissey, whose usually thoughtful and reliably conservative musings at Captain’s Quarters command my respect, if not necessarily agreement. In the Captain’s carefully proscribed orbit, Democrats are always ducking responsibility and the corner is just about to be turned in Iraq. Monotonously inaccurate, but then my glasses have clear lenses. But the Captain crossed the line...