News at Home

George Jetson on the Unemployment Line?

by Hardy Green

In southern Iran along the shore of the Persian Gulf, a vast industrial area is under construction.  The complex known as the Pars Special Energy

Pheasant Season in New Orleans

by Megan E. Paredes

“It was great!  It was like pheasant season in South Dakota.  If it moved, you shot it.”If the images from the Convention Center and Superdome were not enough, if stories of police brutality and subsequent cover-ups do not make you think about the fragility of the civilized society that we live in, maybe Wayne Janak’s hobby of people-hunting will.The reports from Algiers Point in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina are unnerving and saddening.  Upon the invita

The Qur’an and the Fig Tree

by Timothy R. Furnish

My recent HNN blog What Would Jesus Do with a Qur’an? Actually He Might Burn It ignited a firestorm of controversy (puns intended), especially after Robert Spencer was kind enough to pick it up for Jihadwatch.  This blog was the theologically-focused sequel to the more political one the previous day, Fahrenhe

More Controversy in Texas over Textbooks

by John Willingham

Ignoring appeals from board moderates, the social conservative majority on the Texas State Board of Education approved on September 24 a resolution against “politically-correct whitewashes of Islamic culture and stigmas on Christian civilization,” which Randy Rives, who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the board earlier this year, alleged were present in some textbooks.The board’s social conservatives were not concerned that their vote could add to the growing anti-Muslim sentim

The Recession Is Dead! Long Live the Recession!

by Robert E. Wright

It’s finally official, or at least as official as it gets:  the economy began to grow again in June 2009, eighteen months after it began shri

Congress Takes Stand for Military History

by Ed Hooper

Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta will become the first living Medal of Honor recipient since the Vietnam War.  He will be one of four, who have fought in Afghanistan, to receive the nation’s highest honor.  While President Obama will decorate a living soldier with the medal, Congress is considering a resolution to declare November U.S. Military History Month in America.  The bill was introduced by U.S. Representative John Duncan (R-TN) and is now garnering the

We Ignore Our Infrastructure at Our Peril

by Carl A. Zimring

The explosions were horrifying.  A quiet residential subdivision south of San Francisco was consumed by a massive fireball in the early evening of September 9.  Firefighters who rushed to the scene initially thought that an airplane had crashed into the neighborhood.No airplanes crashed, but the thought was understandable.  By the time the fire was contained, fifteen acres of suburban San Bruno had burned, with thirty-seven homes destroyed.  Within one week, six people were co

Memo to Jimmy Carter: Ted Kennedy Didn't Sabotage Healthcare Reform

by Timothy Stanley

Carter’s claim that he was victimized overlooks the fact that he made liberals many promises that he betrayed.

David Brooks’s Gentility Shift

by Stuart Semmel

It’s hard to know what’s more misguided about David Brooks’ September 9 column in the New York Times, titled

Islamophobia and Anti-Catholicism—Two Sides of the Same Coin

by Peter Walker

The ironically-named Dove World Outreach Center has just fifty members and undoubtedly belongs to the lunatic fringe of American society.  Its proposed Koran burning, however, was a manifestation—an extreme manifestation—of a much wider Islamophobia.  Fear of Islam has been prominent recently in the storm in a teacup over the Cordoba Mosque and in the contested memory of the September 11 terrorist attacks.  The 9/11 anniversary prompted many in Europe and America to voice, to varying

The Conscience of the Conservatives?

by Jonathan M. Schoenwald

A quick trip around the blogosphere finds critics calling Dinesh D’Souza’s

Police Torture Scandal Could Be the Real Reason Daley is Stepping Down

by Andrew S. Baer

A decades-old police torture scandal in Chicago may have helped convince Mayor Richard M. Daley to slip quietly out of City Hall’s seldom-used backdoor of retirement.  Early last week, Daley, whose very name has been a metonym for Chicago ever since his famous father took office over half a century ago, informed a stunned city that he would not be seeking an unprecedented seventh term in next year’s mayoral primary.  In the wake of his announcement, journa

What Can the South Teach About Globalization?

by James C. Cobb

As early as 1953, C. Vann Woodward was pointing out that the South’s protracted struggle with poverty, tragedy, and defeat, actually gave it more in common historically with the rest of the world than with the rest of the United States.  One of

Glenn Beck’s History Lesson: Amnesia and Conformity

by Ron Briley

A perusal of Glenn Beck’s commentaries on Fox Television reveals a man who perceives himself as a traditional history teacher.  He has his blackboard and trusty pointer, while he removes his glasses to underscore key points.  His lessons are essentially lectures in which professor Beck leads his viewers (class) to the proper conclusions.  There is no room for discussion or creative thinking in the Beck classroom.  A healthy respect for the role played by ambiguity an

Historians and the Prop 8 Decision

by John Willingham

More than seven years ago, on July 3, 2003, HNN published “The Historians’ Case Against Gay Discrimination,” a fascinating brief prepared by prominent historians to support same-sex plaintiffs in the famous case Lawrence v. Texas (June 26, 2003), in which the United States Supreme Court struck down prohibitions against all private, adult consensual sex.Many of the same arguments in that brief, presented by so

Why Does Obama Keep Apologizing?

by Moshe Dann

President Obama's defense of the right of Muslims to build a mosque and Islamic center in New York City turned the issue into one of religious freedom.  That was wrong.Obama's first priority—like that of every national leader—is to speak for his country and on their behalf.  Obama's refusal to do so, his insinuation that questions raised about a proposed Islamic mega-center near the site of the 9/11 attacks are un-American, unconstitutional, and prejudiced h

Why Do So Many Americans Think Obama is a Secret Muslim?

by Rick Shenkman

This recent Pew Research Poll showing that an increasing number of Americans think Obama is a Muslim is] pretty amazing at this stage of his presidency. That's a lot of ignorance. In fact, in select states during the campaign the stats were more egregious. In Ohio and Florida during the primary of 2008 47% thought he was either Muslim or they didn't know his religion. (This was after the Rev. Wright business.) In Texas 23% thought he was

Vote iQ Hot Topics: Immigration

The United States is a country of immigrants. But that has not stopped immigration from being a hot button topic through much of our history. Each last wave of immigrants often feels the door should be closed to the next wave. It's made for frequently contentious debates between those who believe that America's ever-changing diversity is its strength, and those who prefer to limit newcomers in order to retain an ever-diminishing European-Anglo concentration. Despite frequent attempts

True Bipartisanship Is Not Love and Kisses

by Jeremy C. Young

Now that Senate Republicans have derailed President Obama's popular campaign finance reform bill, it's time we admitted a sad truth: bipartisanship is a noble idea in theory, but it fails in practice. The doomed reform package is just the latest example of that failure, as intransigent Republicans filibuster every bill they consider not bipartisan enough. Defenders of bipartisanship, such as the president, claim it's necessary for"getting things done."  Yet instead

How Empathy Makes Superior Judges—and Justice

by Joel K. Goldstein

In voting on President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court last week, senators should have considered not only her legal ability and constitutional vision, but also her capacity to be an empathetic justice. Republicans mocked President Obama when he suggested that empathy was an important ingredient in a justice.  In fact, the president was simply repeating the insight Theodore Roosevelt uttered more than a century ago when he explained to hi