Blog Posts

I’ve been watching the baubleheads on the networks discuss the Mueller report, and I’m disappointed. From the left, cries for impeachment. From the right, claims of exoneration. And from the center, a wary appraisal – President Trump was never going to charged with obstruction,...

Hey, brother, can you spare a Bitcoin? We may not yet be at a point where panhandlers request cryptocurrency, but increasingly, Bitcoin and other alternative currencies,[1] are on the mind of regulators, investors, and merchants. Lawyers are free to accept Bitcoin as payment for legal...

Power, Moises Naim tells us, is everywhere on the decline: whether in the realm of corporations, the effective military reach of the state, or religion—leaders don't have the unquestioned clout they once enjoyed. This presents great opportunities for innovation and creativity. It also...

St. Augustine reports the following conversation between Alexander the Great, who struggled to drive pirates from the Mediterranean Sea, and a hapless pirate who had fallen into the emperor’s custody.
“How dare you molest the sea,” Alexander said.
“How dare you...

Edward Snowden will soon be prosecuted by federal authorities for disclosing top secret Government surveillance programs. While he styles himself a whistleblower, he is really something far more radical: He represents a new, and in my view, welcome, version of civil disobedience. He’s the...

If you’ve not watched the video interview of Edward Snowden posted on the Guardian’s webpage, do so. He makes a persuasive case that the American people are being lulled into a false sense of security. We’re moving, inexorably, in the direction of what he calls “turnkey...

Times change, and so do the means of challenging those holding power. At the time of the founding in the United States, the individual right to bear arms was sacrosanct. If every able-bodied man, well, make than white man, were armed, then no tyrant could hold power. We the people would shoot them...

I expect the trial of the year will be United States of America v. Julian Assange. Of course, Assange has not yet been charged. He is not even in the country. But the United States will find a way to bring him here, a sort of reverse rendition that will place the Australian hacker within the...

I take it as a given that Bradley Manning was one of the sources of the classified material Wikileaks published about our war efforts in Afghanistan and the seamier side of American diplomacy. Hence, the military hearings underway laying bare the association between the two men hardly surprises....

I want to know more about Glenn Greenwald. I’ve been reading his columns for awhile online. He writes for Salon, and his left-of-center take on the pathologies of power in the United States seems dead right to me. He is the kind of guy I can imagine on my side in a fight.
But then I...