Gehry House Santa Monica California

The shack where a 52-year-old man starved in Kitakyushu. One man has died in each of the last three years in the city after losing or being refused welfare benefits.

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

"I picked the best person I could find," Bush said at his first full-fledged White House news conference since May. "People know we're close. But you got to understand, because of our closeness, I know the character of the person. It's one thing to say a person can read the law -- and that's important -- and understand the law. But what also matters . . . is the intangibles. To me, a person's strength of character counts a lot."

[Bush] did not shy away from making a similar assertion when asked if Miers, out of all the people in the country, is "the most qualified" choice. "Yes," he answered. "Otherwise I wouldn't have put her on."

Friday, January 5, 2007

President Bush accepted the resignation of White House counsel Harriet Miers yesterday as he remakes his legal team to prepare for what aides expect to be a sustained struggle with a new Democratic Congress eager to investigate various aspects of his administration.

Miers, a longtime Bush loyalist whose nomination to the Supreme Court was withdrawn in 2005 as a result of conservative opposition, led an office that will oversee legal clashes that could erupt if Democrats aggressively use their new subpoena power. Bush advisers inside and outside the White House concluded that she is not equipped for such a battle and that the president needs someone who can strongly defend his prerogatives.

Letter from the wife of Ali al-Marri, an alleged "enemy combatant," who after being detained in 2001 in Peoria, Illinois is being held indefinitely by the U.S. government. Arabic words have been blacked out, most likely including the word "Allah."

Muhammad at Ka'ba without facial features, c. 1595

Mr. Marri shared a fantasy with one of his lawyers not long ago. “I’d love to be taken back to Saudi Arabia and they would beat the” — here, he swore — “out of me for six months,” Mr. Marri said, according to Mr. Savage. “It would be brutal, but it would be finite."