Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122000685.html

As noted in this article:

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

The article claims that he has resigned following the revelation that government surveillance was being undetaken without the prior approval of the Court.

Link: http://www.factcheck.org/article365.html

This article explains how the blanket statement "The Unites States does not torture", which has been uttered on at least one occasion by the President, is significantly at variance with revealed information about past events, specifically legal opinions published inside the administration about what is permissible when engaging in interrogations.
The fundamental issue is that, without even considering the unfortunate events in Abu Ghraib, there is a lot of evidence that this administration has been engaging in manouvering and legal sophistry to provide cover for interrogation techniques that would fit many people's definition of "torture". In short, we have been getting the run-around from the administration on this issue, and we cannot trust a word they publish on the issue any more, because their rhetoric has never matched their actions.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/print/1/displaymode/1098/

...looks to be getting dangerously out-of-hand, as reported in this article.
Clearly some people connected to the executive branch and the military/intelligence community require an elementary education in a couple of concepts:

1. The US Constituion is not some "goddamned piece of paper". Obeying the Constitution is not optional. It is the supreme law of the land.
2. Dissent is not disloyalty.

Got that?

Link: http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=2106

Having read in the 1960's about the sort of things that used to occur in Texas politics during the rise of LBJ (the first American President that we heard on the radio who could not pronouce "I" as "I"), I had long ago formed the opinion that Texas politics was, er, well, different (for different read seedy in many cases).
Here is one of the weirder stories that I have read about Texas politics.
What is more worrying is that a bunch of electors voted for the players in this saga, thus empowering them to behave like immature, petty horse's asses.
I hear people constantly complaining about the perceived poor quality of their elected representatives. However, it seems that when it comes to voting for those representatives, many electors are overcome by some dysfunctionality that totally disrupts their decision-making, allowing them to vote for the sort of people that (to use a delightful piece of old English vernacular) I wouldn't even cross the road to piss on even if they were on fire...

Link: http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/20051218warpowers.html

...is coming under the microscope, following the extraordinary events of the last week, when the President admitted that he had authorized surveillance of US residents without a warrant, then promply justified it by asserting that it fell within his executive privilege.
A number of articles have since discussed and expanded on these assertions. Here is one such article. The consensus is that the legal basis for the executive branch actions is shaky at best. In fact, as this 1972 Supreme Court decision makes clear, warrantless surveillance has in the past been regarded as a breach of the Constitution, rendering any information or evidence gained by such means as inadmissible in any court of law.
My conclusion (and I am not a lawyer, but I can read English) is that the President and the executive branch are asserting rights and privileges not granted to him by Congress as part any resolutions or laws passed since 9/11.
In short, the President has exceeded his powers. I wait with interest to see how Congress and the Senate intend to address this violation...

Link: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-wilmer_13met.ART0.North.Edition2.e2ca81b.html

...after it was formally agreed that the district, which has been fiscally (and arguably ethically) bankrupt since 2004, will be absorbed into the Dallas ISD.
Since Dallas ISD has its own set of problems, this may not be a perfect solution, but since Wilmer-Hutchins ISD has been a totally mismanaged mess for years, it is probably a better short-term solution.

Link: http://jeffrey-feldman.typepad.com/frameshop/2005/12/frameshop_bushs.html

It seems that the Bush Administration does not care much for the collection of laws and checks and balances called the U.S. Constitution. Earlier this week, it was revealed that the NSA has been conducting secret surveillance on U.S. residents without any court permission or court order.
The President has apparently not only defended this egregious abuse of the powers of law enforcement, but is also (rather cheekily) asserting that the revelation of this abuse of due process is illegal...
See this review for further commentary on what looks to me like a clear breach of the constitution by the executive branch.

Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2132351/?nav=fo

It should not be news to anybody that the "Big Three" automakers in the USA are struggling to survive in their current form. While there are a number of related and not-so-related reasons for this (including, most significantly in my opinion, the appallingly unconstructive working relationships between the corporate leadership and a largely-unionized workforce), the main question that these corporations are facing is: how to get out of the mess.
Generally, when a large corporation is in trouble, the problems are significant, and require significant action to resolve. Small steps generally won't cut it. However, apart from vague mutterings about welching on their pension obligations (which will, in effect, result in a massive government bailout, as the Feds are forced to assume the pension liabilities), there appear to be precious view signs of dramatic action from GM.
One problem may be the somewhat weird composition of GM's board of directors, and the fact that they have next to no financial exposure to GM. This article explains that Kirk Kerkorian, who is trying (so far unsuccessfully) to place a representative on the board, has invested a lot more money in buying GM stock than the whole of the current board. That he cannot get a seat at the table suggests that the board is currently circling the wagons. I'm not sure what they're waiting for. In the 1980's the UK automobile industry essentially became non-viable because of competition from Japan. A similar dynamic played out, as the UK automakers engaged in all sorts of special pleading, while doing little to address their fundamental issues (the main one being an inability to build cars that didn't fall to pieces).
I'm not optimistic that the Big Three will still be around in 5 years. I'm actually amazed that their stock prices are not edging down to penny stock status, given their manifest incompetence, over-reliance on cozy market niches that do not push them to embrace modern engineering approaches (step forward, SUV and hemi-crew-cab-move-a-small-mountain pickup truck), and the apalling current state of their finances, with their healthcare and pension liabilities swinging from their bodies like concrete blocks on a Mafia victim.
If GM can get rid of most of its board and re-work its entire product approach to actually build cars that people will want to buy in the future (less hemi, more mpg) I would be guardedly optimistic about its chances. Right now, I can't see much hope. The Japanese auto makers almost single-handedly wiped out the UK auto manufacturers by producing better-designed, better-assembled, cheaper and more reliable vehicles, and the UK companies spent too long in denial before responding. GM currently looks like it is sleepwalking down the road to meet the same fate.

Link: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43438

...putting the knife into the ridiculous "War On Christmas" meme?
Priceless.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/iran.israel/index.html

...and come out and claimed that the Holocaust is a myth.
As you might expect, this assertion has not gone down well worldwide. Nor should it. He provided no argument to back up the assertion, since it is pretty difficult to find one unless you are prepared to overlook reality.
However, lost in the condemnations and general huffing and puffing was any considered response to Ahmadinejad's suggestion (which he made in a similar speech last week, and repeated again in this speech) that Israel should have been placed in Europe after World War II. That Israel was not created in Europe (probably by annexing part of Germany and Austria) was a fact that puzzled me when I studied History in high school. After all, the campaign to exterminate Jews was an integral part of the whole strategy of Nazi Germany, so it seemed logical to me that Germany should have been punished by being forced to give up land to create a Jewish state.
Of course, the Biblically-based appeal of a return to their ancestral homeland won out over any other solution, so Israel was created (like so many other "countries" in the Middle East) by a carve-up of existing territories. This overlooked the fundamental fact that the existing occupants were not going to be too pleased about having their land annexed for its creation. What has proved more depressing since is how events in that part of the world have spiralled downwards to create the current tinder-box of festering hatreds, many of them fuelled by a theistic worldview. However, the uncomfortable truth remains that manufactured countries do not have a good track record, especially when the neighbours don't want them. Israel is the worst possible example of this.