by TChris

Heck of a job there, Bushy.

Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Isn't it about time for the president to award himself a medal?

by TChris

Another poll, this one conducted by The NY Times and CBS News, brings more bad news for Republicans. Perhaps the most telling finding:

Americans - including women and suburbanites - are more likely to say that Democrats, and not Republicans, share their moral values.

by TChris

As the military redeploys troops to hold Baghdad, it's in danger of losing the rest of the country.

"We do not have sufficient troop strength to secure the entire country simultaneously," Andrew Krepinevich, a military analyst, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Trying to be strong everywhere will lead us to being strong nowhere."

Meanwhile, we're told that the administration's policy isn't to "stay the course" -- a prospect that looks bleak no matter how often the president repeats the mantra. Instead, the policy is "constantly being adjusted." Is this the latest version of the "adapt to win" slogan that never seemed to gain traction?

A new CNN poll finds a majority of respondents say Denny Hastert should resign over FoleyGate.

The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation, found that 52 percent of the 1,028 adults interviewed think Hastert should step aside. Only 31 percent said they think he should keep his post, and 17 percent had no opinion. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percent. (Full poll results)

I agree but I hope he continues to follow his ego instead of poll results so the Dems can win by an even greater margin in November.

I guess "the buck stops here" doesn't have the same meaning it used to.

Must read of the day: When Lawyers are War Criminals: Remarks delivered by Scott Horton at the ASIL Centennial Conference on The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Bowling Green, OH, Oct. 7, 2006.

On the Military Commissions bill:

I want to ask today: What has this legislation done to the legacy of Nuremberg? Has it granted impunity to persons who committed war crimes? Is that impunity effective, and might it have unintended consequences?

At Nuremberg, Justice Jackson promised that this process would not be "victor's justice." He said "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well." Powerful words. A moral compact. Did the Bush Administration seek to repudiate Jackson's commitment? This can be answered quite clearly: yes. But did they succeed? That is less clear.

Law Prof Marjorie Cohn warns that the military commissions bill authorizes Bush to round of thousands, including Americans, and hold them in detention camps.

The contract, she writes, has already been awarded to a Haliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As I wrote back in May, when warning about the Republican immigration bill, immigrants aren't safe either.

Australian news reports that North Korea seems to be preparing for a second nuclear weapon test.

Kim Seung-Gyu, head of South Korea's spy agency, told parliament that activity involving vehicles and as many as 40 people was under way at Punggyeri in the north-eastern county of Kilju, Yonhap news agency reported.

"From 4pm (AEST) today, there have been some unusual movements under way at Punggyeri where we had thought the first nuclear test would be carried out," Mr Kim was quoted as saying. "We have been closely following developments there to find out whether North Korea is moving to conduct a series of tests as India and Pakistan did," he said.

What we should do about Korea is far beyond my expertise, but Matt Yglesias and Brad Plumer have some thoughts.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Scott Lemieux responds to my reaction to his post on Dred Scott. I will respond to Scott's points that I feel pertinent to my argument. Lemieux writes, in part:

To take the key points as they come up:

• BTD then articulates a structuralist theory of Constitutional interpretation, identified with John Marshall, and locates a similar theory in Lincoln's famous Cooper Union speech. Now, I am something of a structuralist myself, and I agree that Lincoln constructs a perfectly plausible reading that I of course find infinitely more attractive than Taney's arguments for moral reasons. But this isn't enough; the question is not whether there are plausible arguments against Taney, but whether Lincoln provides the only plausible reading of the Constitution in 1857. And the answer to this is clearly that he doesn't (see pp. 57-76 of the Graber book.)

The Washington Post reports the number of wounded troops in Iraq is growing significantly.

More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war, and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam.

It looks like Rumsfeld was wrong again:

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Another cut and runner:

It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed.

Unfortunately, and tragically, there can be no doubt this is true. There is no hope for success as promised by the Bush Administration. There never was. But it is worse than that. We now have an unmitigated disaster. The action to take now is to deal with this fact and start working on the consequences of this monumental Bush failure. The time for thinking about what to do starts November 8, after the elections. why? Because Bush, supported blindly by the Rubber Stamp Republicans, will not deal with reality. And if the Republicans hold both houses of Congress next January, then the planning can't start until 2009 at the earliest. Because Bush won't do it and congressional Republicans will not either.

by TChris

A prosecutor got herself tossed from a case because its facts were too similar to those of a crime novel she'd authored and was promoting at the time of the prosecution. The defense raised a "novel" question in seeking her disqualification.

In January, Joyce Dudley, a deputy district attorney in Santa Barbara, published a crime novel called "Intoxicating Agent." Its heroine, Jordon Danner, has the same initials and the same job as Ms. Dudley, and the novel concerns a rape case with echoes of a real one. In both, the victim said she had been sexually assaulted after being given an intoxicating drug. ...

"She has a disabling conflict of interest," Justice Kenneth R. Yegan of the California Court of Appeal wrote of Ms. Dudley for a unanimous three-judge panel. Ms. Dudley must be disqualified, Justice Yegan continued, because the defendant, Massey Haraguchi, "is being prosecuted for raping an intoxicated person while the prosecutor is promoting her novel involving the identical charge."

Justice Yegan wrote that Ms. Dudley's desire for money and fame might tempt her to throw the book at the defendant, as it were.

by TChris

As if the world hadn't exceeded its quota of serious trouble:

North Korea Says Nuclear Test a Success