“With all due immodesty, I think it doesn’t help to lose me because people have told me they read The Voice not only for me, but certainly for me.” In another troubling indicator of how bad things are getting in the world of print journalism, the venerable institution Nat Hentoff is laid off from The Village Voice. “‘Nat Hentoff wrote liner notes for every great musician that I’ve ever loved, from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin, and that’s not even what he’s been writing about for the last 30 years,’ said Tom Robbins, a Voice staff writer.”
Tag: Nat Hentoff
Meanwhile, in Room 101.
Nat Hentoff files another dispatch on Guantanamo, and it ain’t pretty. “The authority to unilaterally keep a defendant locked up — conceivably for the rest of his or her life — used to be reserved solely for kings, who could ignore any part of the realm’s legal system. This monarchical power — as I’ve indicated in reporting on the indefinite imprisonment, without charges, of American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla — has been expanded by George W. Bush to include defendants at Guantanamo.“
Paging Judge Danforth.
“Two senators – one a conservative Republican, the other a moderate Democrat – who spoke with Ashcroft…were surprised at his lack of command of the basic issues. Whether it was lack of interest or lack of intellectual firepower, the Attorney General seemed not to appreciate the complexities of the constitutional issues he was dealing with.” Nat Hentoff cites Stephen Brill’s After to depict amateur hour in the Ashcroft Justice Department.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
Nat Hentoff recoils at the provisions of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft’s next salvo in the war on civil liberties. Meanwhile, Dubya’s bean counters at the White House OMB try to ascertain the monetary value of lost privacy and freedom. Sigh…you know it’s gotten bad when even GOP apparatchiks like Dick Armey are calling out the Justice Department.