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Was the Conviction of an 18 Year Old Black Kid for Rape Racist?

by James E. McWilliams

The story of Marcus Dixon isn't the only newsworthy court case to be stranded by higher-profile events. But it may be the most tragic. Dixon is an 18-year-old man who's been sentenced by a Georgia state court to 10 years in prison after having sex with a girl who was a few months shy of her 16th birthday. Dixon, who claimed the sex was consensual, is black. The girl, who claimed she was raped, is white. The jury convicted Dixon of "statutory rape and aggravated child molestat

Should We Judge Bush by the Content of His Character?

by Ruth Rosen

George W. Bush, who describes himself as our "war president," actually knows precious little about war, including the one he launched in Iraq. In last Sunday's interview with NBC News' Tim Russert, the president revealed that, absent a scripted speech on a TelePrompTer, he is unable to defend his decision to invade and occupy Iraq. His responses only widened his growing credibility gap. He insisted that he tried every diplomatic alternative to war, even though many of us

Vietnam 30 Years Later: What John Kerry Said on Meet the Press

On May 6, 2001 Tim Russert interviewed Senator John Kerry on Meet the Press. In the course of the interview, Mr. Russert asked the senator about his views on Vietnam.MR. RUSSERT: You mentioned you're a military guy. There's been a lot of discussion about Bob Kerrey, your former Democratic colleague in the Senate, about his talking about his anguish about what happened in Vietnam . You were on this program 30 years ago as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. And we went

Why He-Man Politics Is All the Rage this Year

by Jeremy H. Neill

Politics and manliness have always been bound together in American politics in one form or another. Just last month in the Jan. 28 issue of the Washington Post George Will penned a column on “The Politics of Manliness” in which he argued that the Democrats recognize manliness as a subtext to the campaign. What varies throughout the history of American politics is the explicitness with which someone's manhood is used to make political points of one form or another. Military se

The Fog of Power

by Ruth Rosen

In a newly released documentary, The Fog of War, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara now admits that "we were wrong" about that tragic military conflict. His remorseless confession should be a cautionary tale about the war in Iraq. The problem, says McNamara, who presided over the Vietnam War for seven years, is that American leaders failed to see the world through the eyes of the Vietnamese, who had just defeated the French in 1954 in the Indochina War and viewed

What Douglas Brinkley's Portrait of John Kerry Reveals (About Brinkley and About Kerry)

by Andrew Ferguson

According to the publisher's press release, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, by Douglas Brinkley,"was never intended as a political biography"--meaning, I suppose, that it is not meant to be confused with those ghost-written, election-year puffers and potboilers under whose weight the remainder-tables of America's bookstores are already beginning to buckle and break. Tour of Duty is intended to be a real book that makes an enduring contribution to the national

Bush's Pie-in-the-Sky Mars Plan

by Jonathan Coopersmith

For the first time since Project Apollo nearly four decades ago, NASA has a coherent policy for human space exploration. By deciding to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, President Bush has followed a course many space enthusiasts have urged for decades. Americans are excited about the idea of exploring space. The web sites for Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars rovers, have registered more than four billion hits in less than a month. But the president's proposed plans th

Why Liberals Should Oppose Reinstating the Draft

by Murray Polner

Irony of ironies, longtime liberal, antiwar congressmen, and others are leading the charge to revive the draft. Democrats such as Rep. Charles Rangel believe that if our young—males and females 18-26, with no exemptions for college students or conscientious objectors-- were forced to serve in the military there would less willingness to go to war. Yet a draft was in effect before the Korean and Vietnam wars and never deterred Washington from military involvement---the more potential cann

Is Howard Dean the Goldwater of the Democratic Party?

by Jeffrey J. Matthews

What a difference two weeks can make in a presidential primary campaign! Seven days before the Iowa caucuses, Howard Dean led the Democratic pack by at least 12 percentage points in polls. But his campaign has been in a tailspin ever since. John Kerry trounced the maverick front-runner in Iowa and repeated his victory in New Hampshire, where Dean had led the field by as many as 23 points. Many factors explain Dean's fall, but certainly he proved a poor student of presidential electi

A Great Economy If You're Rich

by Jonathan Rees

A few weeks ago, I was watching CNN when a guy who came on explained how I could retire rich. Apparently, if I give up my daily latte and invest those savings in the stock market, I can become a millionaire. What struck me most about this particular proposal was not its merits (even though I don't drink coffee), but its timelessness. Although this was the first pitch of this kind that I had seen in the post-bubble era, the roots of this argument are at least seventy-five years old.

If Only the Hero of the Lord of the Rings Were a Candidate in '04

by Tim Furnish

This is hard for a George Bush supporter to admit, but I've reluctantly concluded that America needs--as Michael Moore puts it--"regime change" in 2004. Despite all the good he's done Bush, largely through no fault of his own, is simply too divisive to continue as an effective leader for another term. But what segment of American society (outside of latte-clutching, Volvo-driving professors and their clueless students--otherwise known as "Deaniacs") could actually stomach

Column: Why We'll Pay a Price for Bush's Fibs About Iraq's WMD

by P. M. Carpenter

TV-mag journalist Diane Sawyer recently asked the president why, in the prewar stage, he portrayed Iraqi weapons as an imminent threat to U.S. security when intelligence reports, replete with cautionary tones and caveats, more often referred to potentialities. The president answered, “So what's the difference?” Those were astonishing words, even for famously indifferent George W. Bush. Impossible to know is if he let them escape out of peerless arrogance or mere ignorance; yet, using h

The Danger of Scaring Voters

by Ira Chernus

George W. Bush wins high marks from the public for being a strong leader in the war on terrorism. On every other topic, his approval ratings are below 50 percent. So the Bush campaign must keep its focus on public fear of the enemy.   The Democrats may be tempted to follow suit. John F. Kennedy won that way in 1960. But if this year's eventual Democratic challenger tries to emulate JFK, our public life will sink even deeper into the politics of fear. Then we'll all b

Is Bush's Mars Project Out of this World?

by Jonathan Coopersmith

For the first time since Project Apollo nearly four decades ago, NASA has a strong presidential commitment to human flight. By deciding to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, President George Bush has followed a course many space enthusiasts have urged for decades. President Bush's space policy will appropriately invite inevitable comparisons with his father's 1989 failed Space Exploration Initiative and president John F. Kennedy's 1961 decision to go to the moon. The major diff

Column: Can Conservatives Who Trashed Clinton Really Defend Bush with a Straight Face?

by P. M. Carpenter

Dear friends on the right: How do you live with yourselves? For years you fumed and sputtered about a dissembling Democrat occupying the White House, a man so vile and unprincipled that from his wretched beginnings he evaded service to his country and experimented with illegal substances. Later, in the nation's highest office, he was willing to say anything and do anything to hold power. The pattern never varied. He was corrupt to the bone. From start to finish, Slick Willie's c

Column: Pete Rose--A View from the Capital of Gambling

by William Thompson

I have no magic answers for the Pete Rose controversy, I have an opinion. Let sportswriters vote on whether Rose joins Hall of Fame, but keep him off the field pending an intense investigation of his gambling, the sufficiency of his contrition, and reform. When writers vote, they can consider anything including the severity of Rose's offenses compared with the drug addicts, alcoholics and wife beaters they have voted into the Hall. They can consider other athletes in other Halls--the m

Column: Dems in 2004 Should Run on Bush's 2000 Theme: It's Time to Restore Honor and Integrity to the White House

by P.M. Carpenter

Democratic strategists and their presidentially hopeful candidates are of two minds on how best to get out the vote in the coming electoral blood fest. Briefly put, one camp believes in promoting “new ideas” while the other prefers to exploit hardcore anger. This strategic divide may come across as irreconcilable, but the two camps are, or at least could be, much closer in message than usually thought. In proposing new policies to replace the gazillion destructive ones Bush has huckste

Howard Dean Would Be a Disaster for the Democratic Party

by Thomas Fleming

Early in 1948, while he was trying to decide whom he should select to run with him as vice president in the upcoming election, President Harry S. Truman invented a phrase that deserves a long shelf life.  The liberals in the Democratic Party were trying to convince him that he should accept Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas as his running mate. Truman had severe doubts and explained them in his diary as follows: He [Douglas] belongs to t

Should Pete Rose Be Forgiven?

by Ron Briley

So Pete Rose has finally admitted that he bet on baseball while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. His confession and latest autobiography My Prison Without Bars are part of a well orchestrated campaign to convince Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to reinstate baseball's all-time hits leader, paving the way for his induction into the Hall of Fame. Public opinion polls support Rose, and Commissioner Selig, a former used car dealer never known for his strong principled st

Imagine If JFK Had Been President on 9-11

by Alice L. George

As we've learned in the global age, international crises threaten the United States with unprecedented dangers. Prudent, steady leadership is necessary to manage those threats. Once, leadership safeguarded the nation's interest; today, it threatens that interest. Nothing better illustrates the deterioration in the quality of American presidential leadership than comparison of John F. Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis with George W. Bush's appro