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Media Watch: The Six-Month Anniversary

by Sean Patrick Farrell

It happened. Six months later, we still can't get over it. And so we talked about it and talked about it. President Bush spoke at one of many ceremonies held to remember 9-11. He used the opportunity to bolster support for the war."Against such an enemy," he said,"there is no immunity, and there can be no neutrality." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in, calling September 11 the day,"America was changed forever." The New York Times ran stories about the survivors,

The ABM Treaty: Dead or Alive?

by Dr. Robert M. Bowman

On December 13, 2001, President George W. Bush gave notice that the United States was going to withdraw from the ABM Treaty in six months. Is this a correct decision which should go unchallenged? I'm proposing here a decision tree. President Bush should have gone through a decision-making process like this before announcing withdrawal, but obviously, he didn't. There are ten questions, to be answered in order. If the answer to any question is"no," then the process halts and withdrawal

Column: You’re Shocked W Flip-Flopped on Free Trade?

by P.M. Carpenter

I can't for the life of me understand why so many pundits are expressing shocked disgust over George W.'s about-face on the marvels of free trade and the evils of protectionism. Journalistic minds from the left to far-right of center are heaving forth reams of outraged verbiage on the president's befouling hypocrisy and indefensible transgression against his campai

Column: Bush in the Bunker

by Thomas M. Spencer

Boy, what a week for the Bush administration! On February 28th, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle asked a few fairly obvious questions about the ongoing war on terrorism and was verbally assaulted by congressional Republicans as if he had committed treason or, at the very least, advocated normalizing relations with Cuba or some other crazy or outrageous thing. Amazingly, when Tom Delay and Trent Lott were confronted with their own seemingly"unpatriotic" statements about U.S. policy

The Color Line: The Past and Mr. Pickering

by Joshua M. Zeitz

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will vote early in March on the Bush administration's effort to elevate Federal District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. to the 5th Circuit of Appeals, based in New Orleans. The committee should stop this nomination in its tracks. Why is that? Because Judge Pickering once enjoyed connections with the now-defunct Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state-sponsored police outfit that fought tooth-and-nail for almost 20 years to block the enforcement o

Column: Bush Whacked

by P.M. Carpenter

It's getting harder to know if the chaps in charge of things are grounded in seriousness or merely possess an odd sense of humor, for increasingly it seems they're intent on running the country on the basis of preppie-Ivy League farces and pranks. (As we all know George W. showed up at Yale, Dick Cheney studied smugness at the same institution, and Donald Rumsf

Buy Stuff, Be Happy, We’re at War

by Peter Stearns

We all noticed the anomaly. In the wake of one of the worst single-day tragedies in the nation's history, we were told that our chief patriotic obligation lay in revving up our consumerism. Spend frivolously, buy on credit, just get out and shop. Yet at the same time, we were told, and are told, that we're at war. Clearly, some standard relationships between war and consumerism are being reversed. Traditionally, wars cut into consumerism, often deeply. Often in the past, the regional rava

Column: Mob Rule

by P.M. Carpenter

11From applying scientific humbuggery to the Kyoto accords to unilateral insolence on the ABM treaty to strong-arm indifference on fiscal policy, Bush II has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt to American citizens and the world alike its penchant for a Mafia mentality, absent any pretensions of honor. The administration is stuck in the century-old Black Hand decadence of the T.R.-Taft-Wilson era, which historian Robert Wiebe characterized as profit- and power-oriented, and specifically in

Column: Did President Bush Pass Up an Attempt to Get Bin Laden Before 9-11?

by Thomas Spencer

How would Americans have reacted if they had discovered that six months before the outbreak of World War II that Roosevelt's administration was seeking an oil deal with Japan? Or Italy? Or Germany? And what would they think if Roosevelt was threatening war if the deal wasn't consummated? Americans in the twentieth century have become accustomed to discovering years after the fact that their government was negotiating with or propping up repressive regimes. Many Americans believe that"blo

Column: And You Thought the Reagan Hangover Was Bad

by P.M. Carpenter

Like strung-out drug addicts, the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are in serious need of intervention. They're on an artificial high, gobbling political amphetamines by the handful, hocking the family's jewels for more, and dashing about for the next fix before the entire system crashes from the inevitable results of an overdose. When the history of the Bush

Presidency: Dick Cheney's Line Has a Familiar Ring to It

by John Dean

The following piece appeared first on findlaw.com.Vice President Dick Cheney has thrown down the gauntlet. He has refused to give the General Accounting Office the very limited information they have requested about the work of his energy task force. (GAO, created in 1921 during the Harding Administration, has from its inception been an independent and nonpartisan agency of the Congress, charged with studying the programs and expenditures of the federal government.)Cheney says

Americans Just Don't Do Outrage the Way They Used to

by Seth Rockman

Where's the outrage? Americans often seem immune to it. Public indifference to the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999 befuddled Congressional Republicans. Democrats now hope that public anger over Enron's collapse will revitalize campaign finance reform and deliver gains in the fall elections. Shredded documents, a stonewalling White House and congressional subpoenas may generate interest in this latest example of corporate corruption, but if sex didn't sell in 1999, will a scandal about bookkeep

Presidency: “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is … Scary Monsters”

by Andrew R. Heinze

Am I crazy or did George Bush just miss a great chance to enter the annals of American political oratory? I’m pretty certain that the impressive speech he delivered to the joint session of Congress in the aftermath of September 11 will make its way into documentary histories of American politics, to be studied next to other presidential moments of crisis-driven speechmaking. But I can’t say the same for his first State of the Union message. Sure, historians of foreign policy will c

Column: I Wonder Where I Heard that Before

by P.M. Carpenter

I just finished reading a fiery op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times concerning the White House’s obsession with hiding task force records from the public. The author was livid, writing that of all the things that could threaten this administration’s carefully polished image, “there are no greater dangers than the secret files of the ... task force, whic

Presidency: Is Laura Bush a Good First Lady at a Time Like This?

by Gayle V. Fischer

We know that former First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton"spoke" to Eleanor Roosevelt, especially in times of stress. Did First Lady Laura Bush turn to any of her predecessors after the acts of terrorism on September 11, 2001?The United States of America is a country founded in war; the American Revolution (or War for Independence) began with the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775. Over the centuries, armed conflict--domestic and foreign--has characterized much of U.S. history, from

Military: Have You Hugged the Pentagon Today?

by George Beres

When I was in college in the 1950s, the military draft was a reality for most young males in the United States. College enrollment provided a deferment, but only until graduation. Then the army became a reality.One of my Journalism professors at Northwestern University, Dozier Cade, was commanding officer of a rare kind of army reserves unit in Chicago-- a Psychological Warfare Battalion. He suggested I enlist, and spend one night a week away from campus, attending Psy War re

Column: Stop Bush Before He Makes Nixon Look Good

by P.M. Carpenter

Richard Nixon is beginning to look pretty good. Presidential payoffs to bad guys, enemy lists, misuse of government agencies, even obstruction of justice are taking on the pleasant emergence of wistful nostalgia--a real stroll in the park--compared to the sweeping and open violations of public trust being committed by George W. Bush & Company. One longs for the likes

Column: Bush and the Pretzel

by William Thompson

Presidency: Who Is George W. Bush?

by Rick Shenkman

For being such a seemingly simple guy, President Bush has proven to be almost inscrutable in his first twelve months in office. While he's a family man through and through, as advertised, and is as disciplined as he seemed to be during the campaign (though cynics have been guessing the president was actually drunk when he choked on his pretzel), in nearly all other ways he has confounded the predictions of both friends and enemies. Twelve months into his presidency we still don't know who

Column: Tom DeLay, My Hero

by P.M. Carpenter

11In these times of cultural upheaval and social uncertainty, all too often we feel adrift. It seems a heroless age, one in which we yearn for a rock, a beacon of stability, a champion of certitude. In that sense, Tom DeLay is the man of our dreams. Never adrift himself, he’s always the same.11At least he has been since 1985. That, according to a lengthy profile i