WB releases several high-quality stills from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, including one of the eponymous Order and several of new headmaster Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). (And, since it’s wartime at Hogwarts now, it looks like the late ’70’s haircuts of Goblet have gone by the wayside as well.) Update: More here.
Month: September 2006
Army of None.
“The generals’ revolt has spread inside the Pentagon, and the point of the spear is one of Donald Rumsfeld’s most favored officers, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan examines the newest military complaints against Dubya and Rummy: They’ve wrecked the US Army. “This new phase of rebellion isn’t aimed at the war in Iraq directly, as was the protest by six retired generals that made headlines last spring. But in some ways, it’s more potent, and not just because Schoomaker is very much on active duty. His challenge is dramatic because he’s questioning one of the war’s consequences — its threat to the Army’s ability to keep functioning.“
Judgement of Nuremberg.
“The Nuremberg trials presupposed something about the human conscience: that moral choice doesn’t take its cues solely from narrow legalisms and technicalities. The new detainee bill takes precisely the opposite stance: Technicality now triumphs over conscience, and even over common sense. The bill introduces the possibility for a new cottage industry: the jurisprudence of pain.” Also at Slate, David J. Luban argues that Dubya’s recent torture bill spells the end of the Nuremberg era, a period when the US worked hard at “codifying genuinely international humanitarian law,” to say nothing of the Great Writ.
Kihei Snapshots.
As you may have noticed, I’ve added a few pics from my recent weeks in Hawaii over at Flickr. Enjoy.
When the Thunder Rolls.
Over at The House Next Door, always an excellent destination for quality film and television commentary, Andrew Dignan eloquently dissects the various credit sequences for The Wire, and even show creator David Simon comes by to say a word.
We Still Think of You, Jim Henson.
Alas, today would’ve been Jim Henson’s 70th birthday. In honor of the occasion, my sis-in-law sent along a scan of this sad (and arguably deeply disturbing) comic, which originally appeared in Cerebus back in the day (and which I used to have on a T-shirt, before it disintegrated.) Happy birthday, JH.
A Righteous Wrath.
“I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.” While talking of the War on Terror on FOX News, Bill Clinton gets mad as hell and decides not to take it anymore. “‘So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me,’ he said to [Chris] Wallace, occasionally tapping on Wallace’s notes for emphasis. ‘I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of?’“
Casus Belli.
“‘It’s a very candid assessment,’ one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. ‘It’s stating the obvious.‘” A new classified report written by US intelligence agencies and unearthed by the NYT declares that Dubya’s Iraq sideshow has made us weaker in the War on Terror. Gee, you think?
Dubya’s Revolving Door.
Missed this last week: Recently released visitor logs show Abramoff allies held court at the White House over 100 times. The most frequent visitors were disgraced strategists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, but Neil Volz and Tony Rudy, both of whom have pled guilty in the Casino Jack case, also racked up more than a dozen visits each.
The bagmen feel neglected.
In related news, as the battle for control of the House tightens, the GOP’s K-Street cronies find they’ve been put on hold to make way for terror terror terror schtick. “This bottleneck has disappointed and angered organizations that have worked closely with the GOP and have won many legislative benefits. Oil and gas producers, for instance, had high hopes of adding to their legislative gains the opening of drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.“