News at Home

Deserting the Military: Teaching the Lessons the Government Won’t Learn

by Robert Fantina

U.S. soldiers are deserting the military in ever-increasing numbers. Many who have actually fought in Iraq are illegally leaving the military and speaking out against the war. Lance Corporal Ivan Brobeck, who deserted after a tour of duty, witnessed the abuse of Iraqi detainees and the killing of Iraqi civilians. Sgt. Ricky Clousing, also a veteran of the war, deserted when he realized U.S. soldiers were not helping the Iraqis. His allegations of systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees are now be

Why Did Gerald Ford Criticize His Former Colleagues and the Iraq War?

by Yanek Mieczkowski

The revelation that former President Gerald R. Ford harshly criticized the Iraq War has captured headlines since his death.  In a tape-recorded interview that he specified be made public only upon his passing, Ford said that he felt that Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld made a “big mistake” in justifying the war on Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction.  Fo

Where Neo-Conservatism Was Born

by Nathan Abrams

The roots of much of the now-discredited policies of the Bush administration can be found in Commentary magazine over fifty years ago. Commentary was the vehicle (or ‘soapbox’ as the New York Times called it) for the conception, gestation, birth, and transformation of neoconservatism from a small movement to a philosophy at the very center of government. Launched in 1945 by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the oldest and most conservative Jewi

Measuring the American Mood: The Relevancy of Richard Hofstadter

by David S. Brown

In the wake of this year’s electoral season, we are left to again ponder the impact of public mood on American politics. More than three years into a bloody occupation of Iraq, the social scientists and Sunday morning news pundits consult their polls, question their armchair experts, and sift through the proverbial tea leaves in an effort to discern just how much longer “the people” will support the global interventionism of the current administration. Theirs is a busy kin

Interview with Damon Linker: Secular America Under Siege

by Rick Shenkman

Damon Linker is the author of the recently published book, Theocons: Secular America Under Seige (Doubleday), HNN's November Book of the Month. He earned an MA in European history from New York University and a Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University. Let's start with the basics. What is a theocon?A "theocon" (or "theoconservative") is someone who believes that the United States needs a governing philosophy or civil rel

Will Women Join the Ranks of Esteemed Veterans?

by Laura Browder

Dozens of women soldiers are dying in Iraq -- and no one seems to care. Why do I say that? Because the outcry that many expected over the combat deaths of American women in Iraq has not taken place. This shouldn't surprise us. After all, the war in Iraq is the first in which centuries-old American fantasies about the female soldier are being tested. Women soldiers have always had a particularly paradoxical role in the United States, a nation that ties

Democrats -- the Party of Disorder, and Achievement

by Steven Conn

It was during Franklin Roosevelt's first term that Will Rogers is said to have joked: "I am a member of no organized political party-I am a Democrat."As the dust of this momentous midterm election settles, that joke has been resurrected -- mostly by people much less funny than Rogers -- to describe the dilemma of the incoming Democratic majorities in both Congressional houses. After all, many of the new Democratic members of Congress seem to sit to the right of the Democrat

Is It Too Much to Hope that Congress Will Now Finally Stop Issuing Blank Checks for War?

by Gerald Astor

On October 10, 2002, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution that authorized the use of military force against Iraq. Specifically, the President could send in the troops to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and "enforce all relevant United Nations Security resolutions regarding Iraq." On March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush cashed this blank check and ordered an invasion of Iraq. For the fifth

Lessons from America’s Oldest President

by Yanek Mieczkowski

Last week a number of events converged that should remind Americans of Gerald R. Ford. On November 12, 2006, Ford became the oldest former president in history. He turned 93 years and 121 days, surpassing the record Ronald Reagan set. Only four past presidents have lived into their nineties (John Adams, Herbert Hoover, Reagan, and Ford). Among them, Ford had the shortest term in office, 895 days. Yet Ford’s brief presidency had lasting lessons. Although he had no executive

Why Many First Year Female Students Will Dread Going Home Thanksgiving

by Margaret Lowe

If campus rumors and the recent spate of dieting books are to be believed, a good number of first year female students will return home for Thanksgiving a size or two larger than when they left.  They have gained the dreaded “freshman fifteen.”  Despite the fact that they were forewarned by such popular texts as Fighting the Freshman Fifteen: How to Lose Weight in College, How to Stay Fit on the College Meal Plan and Avoid the Freshman Fifteen,  

About Those Now Haggard Evangelicals

by Randall Balmer

The Ted Haggard scandal gave grassroots evangelicals something to ponder as they entered the voting booth on Tuesday, and it will have reverberations for evangelicalism and for the Religious Right far beyond the mid-term elections.

Return of the Freemasons?

by Chris Beneke

If you live in eastern Massachusetts, you might have heard the advertisement on the radio or seen it on television.  I first encountered it on a local hard rock station as I parked by my neighborhood Dunkin Donuts.  An older, distinguished, male voice—it’s supposed to be Benjamin Franklin—speaks vaguely, but solemnly, about his own success and about the potential in me, his presumably young male listener.  A driving, Hollywood-style orchestral score plays in t

What Did the FBI Know About the Execution of Anna Mae Aquash?

by Steve Hendricks

On February 24, 1976, a Jane Doe was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota. In the story the FBI told, there was no sign of violence to the body, and an official autopsy found that she had died of exposure. The corpse was so decayed that fingerprints could not be taken at the autopsy, so, in an unusual procedure, the hands were chopped off and shipped to the FBI lab in Washington. A few days later, the rotting body had to be buried for the sake of public health. The grave was unmarked.

This Veterans Day Let's Hear from the Troops Themselves

by Robert E. Bonner

This years Veterans Day comes in the wake of fierce political campaigning over which policies best serve the interest of U.S. soldiers.

The Myth that Low Taxes and Liberty Go Hand in Hand

by Robin L. Einhorn

One might think the record of the Bush administration and Republican Congress -- from domestic spying to Terri Schiavo to a long and expensive war -- would explode the idea that the difference between liberals and conservatives has something to do with the power of government to intervene in our lives. Yet the stereotype of strong-government liberals and weak-government conservatives continues to shape American political debate, especially when the subject is taxes. The Republicans who substitut

Should Democrats Pay Attention to All the Advice They've Been Getting?

by Robert Brent Toplin

In the recent years and, especially, in the months prior to this year’s election progressive writers have published a variety of books that advise Democrats on ways to improve their political fortunes. Most of these writers draw lessons for their readers by looking back on American history. Several authors suggest that Democrats can learn from techniques employed successfully over recent decades by the conservatives. Others point to Democratic leaders who provided inspiring leadership i

Debating 9/11: Democrats Break Their Silence

by Robert Brent Toplin

After George W. Bush campaigned for Republican candidates in California earlier this month by claiming that Democrats were leaving the nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, responded by saying Bush ignored warnings of an al-Qaeda attack “months before 9/11.” Reid countered the President’s charge with a relevant point about recent history, yet it is remarkable that few Democrats have spoken in a similar way when confronting c

Is Bush a Revolutionary?

by Lee P. Ruddin

Many detractors have berated President George W. Bush, condemning him for jettisoning two centuries of custom. Lafayette History Professor Arnold Offner was just one who asserted that Bush’s new policy (the ‘Bush Doctrine’) was an extremely radical--indeed revolutionary--departure from American practice. National Security Tsar Stephen Hadley has even weighed in (though not intending to disparage his chief) underlining the revolutionary ethos of his boss's doctrine.&

The Unintended Lessons Mitt Romney (and the Rest of Us) Could Learn from George Romney

by Christopher Bonastia

Whoever succeeds George W. Bush will have plenty of messes to clean up.  One crucial issue to address is the lack of coordination within and between federal agencies.  Although not a sexy, headline-grabbing issue, the obvious weaknesses in counterterrorism and disaster preparedness have made its importance unmistakable.  If Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney wins the presidential race and seeks to improve the performance of federal agencies, he will have some family history fro

An Obama Presidency for Lincoln’s Two-Hundredth Birthday

by Robert S. McElvaine

The next president will be inaugurated just over three weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s two hundredth birthday. It will mark a most appropriate moment for the nation to return to the ideals and principles from which it has strayed so far under the leadership of what so plainly is no longer the Party of Lincoln.The disastrous war in Iraq, growing violence in Afghanistan, unprecedented deficits and debt, a slowing economy, soaring energy prices, global warming, the loss of respect a