Roundup: Media's Take

Mark A. Chancey: Islam Resolution Reflects Frightening Agenda

[Mark A. Chancey is chair of the Department of Religious Studies in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences at Southern Methodist University. His e-mail address is mchancey@smu.edu.] Let's not pretend that the resolution on Islam that the Texas State Board of Education is considering is about balance in textbook coverage of the world's major religions. While its final lines sound reasonable – "reject future prejudicial Social Studies su

Tim Rutten: The GOP/'Tea' Party Radicalism

[Tim Rutten is a columnist for the LA Times.] In an afterword appended to the White House diaries he published this week, former President Carter muses, "It may be difficult for some younger readers to realize how much the Washington political scene has changed in the last 30 years." Carter points out that the congressional bipartisanship on which he relied for his considerable number of legislative achievements no longer exists and that the "pernicious e

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson: For the Good of Democracy, Tax Cuts for the Rich Must Expire

[Jacob S. Hacker is a professor of political science at Yale. Paul Pierson is a professor of political science at UC Berkeley. They are the authors of "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class."] The richest 0.1% of Americans have seen their share of pretax national income rise from less than 3% in 1970 to more than 12% in 2007 — the highest proportion since the creation of the income tax in 1913. Yet even as

Meghan Daum: Christine O'Donnell's Real Roots

[Meghan Daum is a columnist for the LA Times.] ...Admittedly, we don't yet have enough information to know whether the abstinence-only, anti-gay, anti-porn, anti-masturbation platform on which [Christine O'Donnell has] built her reputation has worked out as well for her in practice as in preachability. But O'Donnell is no Palin clone. For one thing, we know for sure that O'Donnell, who was born in New Jersey in 1969, is a bona fide member of Generation X. Even if she continues to co

George F. Will: Swing Time in Pennsylvania?

[George F. Will is a columnist for the WaPo.] From the 1930s through the 1950s, Bucks County northeast of Philadelphia acquired a glamorous reputation as a retreat for Manhattan celebrities, including Oscar Hammerstein, who, according to local legend, was inspired by the view from his Doylestown front porch to write "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', " the opening song of "Oklahoma!" Today the county, which is 93 percent of Pennsylvania's 8th congressional District,

Timothy Egan: Curse of the Scorned Class

[Timothy Egan worked for The Times for 18 years – as Pacific Northwest correspondent and a national enterprise reporter. His column on American politics and life as seen from the West Coast appears here on Thursdays. In 2001, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America.” He is the author of several books, including “The Worst Hard Time,” a history of the Dust Bowl, for which he won the National Book Award, and most recently, “The Big Burn: T

Alex Spillius: What happened to the Obama dream?

[Alex Spillius is The Daily Telegraph's Washington Correspondent.] When Barack Obama took office 20 months ago – and what a long 20 months it seems – there was a lot of talk about the great "Team of Rivals" he was appointing around him. Parallels were drawn with the cabinet of substantial talents and big personalities assembled by Abraham Lincoln to rebuild the nation after the civil war. Now, in a new book, Obama's Wars, the veteran reporter Bob Woodward has

David Green: Adam Smith would stand by British Business Secretary

[David Green is the Director of Civitas, the Institute for the Study of Civil Society.] Vince Cable criticised the behaviour of some businesses and banks and found himself under attack as a crypto-Marxist who was hostile to free enterprise itself. This morning he had to assure listeners on the Today programme that he is solidly in favour of a market economy. And yet he could have been quoting the arch free-marketeer Milton Friedman, who famously once said: "With s

José R. Cárdenas: Cuba move is a victory for U.S. policy

[José R. Cárdenas is an associate with the consulting firm VisionAmericas, based in Washington, D.C. From 2004-2009, he served in various senior positions in the Bush administration working on inter-American relations.] The Castro regime's stunning announcement that it is planning to lay off more than 500,000 state workers in the next six months, dropping fully one-tenth of the country's labor force into a barely existent "private sector" has sparked a flurry of commentary

Brent Scowcroft and Jake Garn: Ratify New START now

[Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser during the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations. Jake Garn is a former Republican senator from Utah.] The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just approved the new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty (New START) and sent it to the Senate floor. We are writing to urge that the Senate move promptly to ratify it. The arguments that have been advanced in favor of the treaty are strong and compelling. Why is New START impor

Steven J. Rosen: Will Obama Use His UN Veto?

[Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as a senior ­official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He is now the director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum.] Just before dawn on May 31, 2010, a team of Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship to enforce a blockade against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. As they came aboard, the Israelis were assaulted by a violent faction of Islamic militants. A melee followed in which several of the commandos wer

John Fund: The Carter-Obama Comparisons Grow

[Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.] Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats. Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his abi

Maureen Dowd: Truly Madly Purely Jimmy

[Maureen Dowd is a Washington D.C.-based columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author.] Christine O’Donnell has accomplished the impossible: She’s made Jimmy Carter look like a libertine. The last time the phrase “lust in your heart” swept through American politics was in 1976 when Carter admitted to Playboy that, while he had always been faithful to soul (and sole) mate Rosalynn, he had committed adultery in his heart. “I dropped 15 percentag

John Fund: The Carter-Obama Comparisons Grow

[Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.] Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats. Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his abi

Michael Lind: The Right Picked the Wrong Historical Analogy

[Michael Lind is policy director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation] ...The [Tea Party] movement chose the wrong historical precedent when it selected the Boston Tea Party of 1773, a genuinely revolutionary event, as its symbol. Today’s Tea Party movement is much more like the misguided and ill-fated Whiskey Rebellion of the early 1790s, during the first term of America’s first president, George Washington.... Today’s Tea Party movement resembl

Bernard Weiner: Let's Get Real About the November Election

[Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly two decades, has taught at universities in California and Washington, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@hotmail.com.] I'm finding it difficult to believe that the following reminders ar

Michael Klare: China, Energy, and Global Power

[Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.  His previous book, Blood and Oil, was made into a documentary film and is available at

Yana Yakovleva: Russia Needs It Own Franklin D. Roosevelt

[Yana Yakovleva is founder of Business Solidarity, a nongovernmental organization that lobbies for legal changes and defends businesspeople against extortion, raiding and false criminal charges initiated by government officials. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.] There has been a lot of talk lately about forming a partnership between business and government. The idea is that the business community should become a full-fledged partner with the authorities in implementing President

Jacob Weisberg: The Tea Party's Anarchist Streak

[Jacob Weisberg is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group.] After its primary victories last week in Delaware and New York—following ones in Kentucky, Arizona, and Alaska—we have no choice but to take the Tea Party seriously. Come 2011, we are likely to have mama grizzlies in the House and Senate, and the movement’s gravitational pull is capturing traditional Republicans by the day. So who are these people and what do they want from us? A series of polls, as we

Michael Weiss: Hamas Isn't the IRA and the Middle East Isn't Northern Ireland

[Michael Weiss is the executive director of Just Journalism, a London-based think tank that monitors how Israel and Middle East issues are reported in the U.K. media.] With the resumption of Arab-Israeli direct talks comes the regurgitation of a minority view that these talks are destined to fail because Hamas is excluded.... Didn't the British government eventually sit down with Sinn Fein, the IRA's "political wing," after decades of murderous mayhem in Belfast and bombin