Roundup: Media's Take

Stanley Fish: The First Amendment and Kittens

[Stanley Fish is a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.] To anyone who has been following First Amendment jurisprudence in the past 40 or 50 years, the recent Supreme Court decision (United States v. Stevens, April 20) striking down a statute criminalizing the production and sale of videos depicting animal cruelty in a manner intended to satisfy a partic

Garrison Keillor: Confessions of a Plagiarist

[Garrison Keillor is the host of "A Prairie Home Companion" and writes a syndicated column.] ...It’s resentment, I think, that lights a fire of ambition in our tails and drives us to beat our wings on the porch screen, hoping to reach the incandescent glow of fame and fortune. And now I wonder what deep-down resentment the late Stephen Ambrose was nursing that motivated him to lie about his closeness to his biographee Dwight D. Eisenhower and claim to have spe

Bernard Weiner: Rage and Rebellion: How Will the Left Respond?

[Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international politics, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@hotmail.com.]Like a lot of progressives, I've been puzzling over the Tea Party phenomenon. Many on the left choose to believe that the hundreds and sometimes thousands who attend the

Nikos Konstandaras: The Kindness of Strangers

[Nikos Konstandaras is managing editor of the Greek daily Kathimerini, where this commentary first appeared.] It will take us a long time to come to terms with our new place in the world. This is the first time that Greece has suffered such a defeat without any heroic excuses, without a war, without a natural disaster, without foreigners meddling in our affairs or some great national vision leading us astray. We arrived at a dead end because of our own weak

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The UK Now Has a Credible Third Party

[Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation. She also writes a weekly column for The Post.] What happens when a credible third party gets a real chance to appeal to voters? With 10 campaigning days left, we are seeing the results in the British election, in which the surge of Liberal Democrat leader Nicholas Clegg is driving ideas and policies usually excluded from Britain's hidebound politics into the campaign debate -- and, possibly, into real-world actions. Ameri

Robert Kuttner: Obama Should Stop Listening to the Deficit Hawks

[Robert Kuttner's new book is "A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future." He is co-editor of the American Prospect magazine and a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan policy research and advocacy organization.] Get ready for the dance of the deficit hawks. The way they see it, the economy is headed for dangerous and uncharted fiscal territory because of rising deficits and

Christopher Dickey: Noriega's Last Laugh

[Christopher Dickey is the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor for Newsweek Magazine.] The bent, shuffling figure in a porkpie hat shown on the news being hustled to an Air France plane by U.S. marshals on Monday was impossible to recognize as Manuel "the Pineapple" Noriega, the Panamanian dictator I used to know. Once so vilified that President George H.W. Bush launched a little war called Operation Just Cause to arrest him in 1989, Noriega has

David Marquand: The 1926 UK Elections Revisited

[Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy by David Marquand, is published in paperback by Orion (£14.99).] History doesn't repeat itself, but as the old adage says, it does rhyme. The rhyming is now clamorous and incessant. If the Liberal Democrat surge that followed Nick Clegg's victory in the first televised leaders' debate continues, we shall be in spitting distance of a hung Parliament. Of course, it may not continue. The Clegg boom may peter out; residual &qu

David Upham: Is Texas Messing With History?

For several months, the elected members of the Lone Star State's board of education have considered extensive revisions to the state's K-12 social studies curriculum. After months of efforts, the board's conservative majority tentatively approved a new curriculum in March, and on April 15 the board published its proposal, which it may adopt after allowing 30 days for public comment. The comment has been vocal. Critics in Texas and across the nation have decried the changes as educat

Anne Applebaum: Britain's Spot of Tea Party

[Anne Applebaum writes a column for the Washington Post.] Here is a riddle: What would the Tea Party movement look like if it were British, privately educated and had once worked as a ski instructor in Austria? The answer: It would look like Nick Clegg, leader of the British Liberal Democratic Party -- and possibly the beneficiary of the biggest revolution among British voters in decades. For those who don't follow these things, the Liberal Democrats are Britain's hist

Dariush Zahedi and Gokhan Bacik: Kemalism Is Dead, Long Live Kemalism

[DARIUSH ZAHEDI is a Research Fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches at Zirve University, in Turkey. GOKHAN BACIK is Associate Professor of International Relations at Zirve University and a contributor to Zaman and Today’s Zaman.] In both Turkey and the West, Kemalism -- the principle that Turkey should be secular and Western -- has been pronounced dead. The country is drifting away from both, the argument go

Simon Ramo: Humans on Mars? Forget it

[Simon Ramo was the chief scientist and technical director in the creation of the United States' intercontinental ballistic missile system and a co-founder of TRW Inc. He received the National Medal of Science form President Carter and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Reagan.] Nearly half a century ago, we sent men to the moon because we had to stop the world from thinking that the Soviet Union, having put a man in orbit, had surpassed the United States in science an

Hal G.P. Colebatch: Space Is Lost

[Hal G.P. Colebatch, a lawyer and author, has lectured in International Law and International Relations at Notre Dame University and Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and worked on the staff of two Australian Federal Ministers.] Any long-term future for the U.S. in space has suddenly become a great deal less assured, despite the fact space flight has been paying massive dividends for decades. President Obama, to the joy of some rivals and enemies of the U.S. Space program,

Simone Dinah Hartmann: The Austrian-Iranian Axis

[Ms. Hartmann is director of Stop the Bomb Austria and co-editor of "Iran in the World System," to be published by Studienverlag.] While the Western world is trying to rally international support for tougher sanctions against Tehran to stop its nuclear-weapons program, Austria seems to seek even closer ties with the mullahs. Instead of isolating the Islamic Republic, Vienna just welcomed Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister, who in 2006 gave the opening speech at Te

Bret Stephens: Peace Processes Never Work

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] Kim Jong Il likes his metaphors to be as literal as possible. When he wants to blow up diplomacy with the U.S., he detonates a nuke. When he wants to torpedo relations with South Korea, he torpedoes one of their ships. Subtlety may not be the North Korean dictator's strong suit, but look at it his way: Every time he bids to be the Worst Person in the World, some liberal chimes in to explain that h

Kai Bird: The Hebrew Republic

[Kai Bird is a contributing editor of The Nation. In 2006 he and Martin J. Sherwin won the Pulitzer Prize for their biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.] My father was a Foreign Service officer, a diplomat and an Arabist who spent virtually all his career in the Near East, as it was called in the State Department. So I spent most of my childhood among the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In the spring o

Eric Alterman: Bill Moyers Retires

[Eric Alterman is a Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.] Nearly twenty years ago, I spoke to Edward R. Murrow's top producer, Fred Friendly, who told me he thought of Bill Moyers as "the Murrow of our time...the broadcaster who most upholds his mantle." But while Murrow remains television journalism's most admired historical figure, it's all but inarguable

Andrew Mycock: British Identity and the Legacy of Empire

[Dr Andrew Mycock is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Huddersfield. He is co-founder of the Academy for the Study of Britishness based in Huddersfield and a member of the Ministry of Justice Youth Citizenship Commission] The ‘politics of Britishness’ and related constitutional matters have not – as yet - played strongly in the general election either in manifestos or during campaigning, though all the main parties of the Union agree that further powers be devolved to

Robert F. Nagel: Stevens, the Radical

[Robert F. Nagel is the Rothgerber professor of constitutional law at the University of Colorado Law School.] When Justice John Paul Stevens retires this summer, he will have served on the Supreme Court for 35 years. Known for his bow ties and polite questioning of lawyers during oral argument, Stevens is the archetypical elite lawyer. He comes from a wealthy family, attended prestigious schools, clerked for a Supreme Court justice, worked as an antitrust lawyer in a private firm, d

Sean Trende: It's 1974 All Over Again in Pennsylvania

[Sean Trende writes for Real Clear Politics.] History may be on the verge of repeating itself. Murtha passed away in February of this year, and a special election has been called for May 18. The Pennsylvania 12th is hardly recognizable as the one that elected Murtha in 1974—it was merged into the heavily Democratic 20th District in 2002. But nonetheless the 12th has been moving sharply toward the Republicans in recent years, along with the rest of Appalachia. After preferring Al Gor