Yearly Archives: 2003

Dollar vs. Euro Suggests Bush Economic Plan Fails Basic Market Test

Posted on December 1, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Once again justifying the Economist's Big Mac Index, which had been saying the dollar was overvalued, the dollar has been crashing against the Euro. This is particularly noteworthy as the Euro-area is not itself in the most wonderful economic shape. Which means that the currency traders think we're in even worse shape (click the imgage for details of the slide over the last 30 days). Lovely.

Posted in Econ & Money | 3 Comments

Our Friends Are Getting Worried that Bush Plans to Cut and Run on Iraq (Like Afghanistan)

Posted on December 1, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil visits Washington D.C. and finds….doom, gloom and a sense that the Iraq invasion is falling apart with appalling consequences: Scotsman.com News – International – Inside story of how Washington is losing its bottle

“In both places it is worse than you think,” I was warned before arriving in the US capital for a series of off-the-record briefings. The warning was accurate.

Take Afghanistan first. You don’t read or see much about it these days. The reality is grim. The Taliban is resurgent; al-Qaeda is there too, but not as relevant as it was. Attacks on aid workers are soaring; many are refusing to leave the urban areas. The warlords are back in control of the countryside, where opium production is already above pre-invasion levels. “Afghanistan is a narco-economy once more,” said one intelligence analyst.

The Taliban regularly mounts attacks in the rural areas and is expected to hit urban centres with greater force. “If they knew how weak we were,” confided one intelligence source, “they would have done it already.” Coalition forces are confined to Vietnam-style strategic hamlets from which they emerge for operations only in great force, before returning to their enclaves. Hamid Karzai’s grip on power is tenuous.

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Posted in Iraq | Comments Off

“You are talking about overthrowing 800 years of democratic tradition.”

Posted on December 1, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Let me be blunt: if Padilla loses his appeal, this isn't a free country any more. That doesn't mean it's a prison state either, there are many shades of gray in life and it will still be freer than many, but any country where the goverment can grab a citizen off the street, lock them up indefinately in solitary without trial or a lawyer, that's not a free country in my book.

It seems that former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy Viet Dinh, one of the most hard-core right-wing members of the new conservative legal establishment, agrees, albeit more politely. Patriot Act Author Has Concerns.

Dinh said he believed the president had the unquestioned authority to detain persons during wartime, even those captured on “untraditional battlefields,” including on American soil. He also said the president should be given flexibility in selecting the forum and circumstances — such as a military tribunal or an administrative hearing — in which the person designated an enemy combatant can confront the charges against him.

The trouble with the Padilla case, Dinh said, is that the government hasn't established any framework for permitting Padilla to respond, and that it seems to think it has no legal duty to do so.

“The president is owed significant deference as to when and how and what kind of process the person designated an enemy combatant is entitled to,” Dinh said. “But I do not think the Supreme Court would defer to the president when there is nothing to defer to. There must be an actual process or discernible set of procedures to determine how they will be treated.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties | 2 Comments

Weapons of Math Instruction

Posted on December 1, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Brian Leiter's Weapons of Math Instruction shows that it's possible to laugh about Really Serious Stuff.

Posted in Completely Different | 1 Comment

Another Minor Bush Mystery Explained: Why There Was So Much Sex in that UN Speech

Posted on December 1, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

At the time George W. Bush gave his speech to the UN, the speech that everyone expected would be devoted to Iraq, the amount of time devoted to the evils of the international sex trade seemed mysterious, even inexplicable. The best explanation I could come up with at the time was that it was filler thrown into the speech becuase the warring factions within the administraiton couldn't agree on much else.

Now, though, an alternate explanation is taking shape: Karl Rove is a genius. The speech was an attempt at political innoculation against the potential corrosion from the Neil Bush sex scandals stemming from his divorce case.

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Posted in Politics: International | Comments Off