Roundup: Media's Take

Kathleen Parker: A Library for Our First President

[Kathleen Parker writes a column for the Washington Post.] It was fitting that the buzz around George Washington's homestead recently was about the first president's overdue library books, just as the estate's guardians were plotting a new presidential library in the Founding Father's name. It seems that the man who could not tell a lie failed to return a couple of volumes that were due on Nov. 2, 1789. That comes to more than 220 years late, or about $300,000 in fines.

Mary Dejevsky: Are Britons the next 'new' Europeans?

[Mary Dejevsky is the chief editorial writer and a columnist at The Independent.] New Europe was the neat formula coined by Donald Rumsfeld in aid of the Bush administration's war effort. The "old Europeans" disliked and derided it, as it suggested that Europe was more divided over the Iraq invasion than it actually was. But they could never deny its grain of truth. There was indeed a split between those who signed up to the Bush crusade for democracy in foreign parts – no

Alexander Cockburn: His Supreme Court Nominee Will Be Obama's True Legacy

[Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com.] With the impending departure from the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice John Paul Stevens at the age of 89, we lose one of the nation's last substantive ties to the Great Depression and to the effect

Steve Kornacki: The GOP's Changing Definition of "Moderate"

[Steve Kornacki is the news editor for Salon.] Since Barack Obama's inauguration, the right wing of the Republican Party has mobilized against, among others, Arlen Specter, John McCain, Bob Bennett and Charlie Crist. The result: Specter left the GOP over a year ago; McCain is facing a grave primary challenge; Bennett may need luck just to make it to a primary in Utah; and Crist is now poised to abandon his GOP primary campaign and run as an independent....

Aaron David Miller: The False Religion of Mideast Peace

[Aaron David Miller served as an advisor on the Middle East to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state. He is currently a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.] On October 18, 1991, against long odds and in front of an incredulous press corps, U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin announced that Ar

Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr.: An Economy of Liars

[Mr. O'Driscoll is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He has been a vice president at Citigroup and a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.] Free markets depend on truth telling. Prices must reflect the valuations of consumers; interest rates must be reliable guides to entrepreneurs allocating capital across time; and a firm's accounts must reflect the true value of the business. Rather than truth telling, we are becoming an economy of liars. The cause is straigh

Christian Science Monitor: Take a Cue from Europe and Invest in Surface Infrastructure

The cost to the airline industry of the Iceland volcano has now surpassed that of 9/11, according to the group that represents the world’s air carriers. But unlike in the United States, air passengers stranded in Europe have more transportation options with highly interconnected and efficient trains, buses, and ferries.... Over the decades, the Europeans have worked steadily at building this extensive and generally reliable surface network – not without grumbling. Back

Jonah Goldberg: Tea Parties a Delayed Bush Backlash

[Jonah Goldberg is an editor for the National Review and writes a column for the LA Times.] I attended the Cincinnati Tax Day Tea Party rally as a speaker. But it was more interesting to be an observer. First, here's what I didn't see. I didn't see a single racist or bigoted sign or hear a single such comment. Nor did I see any evidence of "homegrown fascism." Though in fairness, such things are often in the eye of the beholder, now that dissent has gone from

Barbara Crossette: Benazir Bhutto's Death Still Unresolved

[Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.] After an eight-month investigation by a United Nations-appointed commission into the assassination in December 2007 of Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned to return to the leadership of Pakistan, the world is no closer to knowing what forces-- militant Islamists, official plotters or even personal enemies--were to blame for her death.

Michael Rubin: Iran ... The Case for “Regime Change”

[Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, lectures at the Naval Postgraduate School and Johns Hopkins University.] What to do about Iran, especially now that the international community can no longer deny the nuclear ambitions of the theocratic state that has implicitly promised to destroy Israel? It appears that hopes for a self-generated revolution from below against the Islamic Republic have been dashed for now: the regime succeeded in containing ma

Christopher L. Eisgruber: Justice Stevens will not be easily replaced

[Christopher L. Eisgruber is provost of Princeton University and the author of "The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process." He clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens in 1989 and 1990.] President Obama has said that he will seek to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens with someone who has "similar qualities." If the president is looking for another brilliant lawyer to join the court's liberal wing, he might

Andrew Cohen: Learning the Lessons of the Oklahoma City Bombing 15 Years Later

[Andrew Cohen is a two-time Edward R. Murrow Award-winner and former legal editor and chief network legal analyst and commentator for CBS News Radio and its hundreds of television and radio affiliates around the country.] Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed 168 lives, the memory seemed so distant even in the state where it happened that Oklahoma officials earlier this month passed a law requiring the state's board of education to develop and teach courses abou

John Nichols: Sarah Palin Should Listen to Reagan on National Defense

[Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.] Ronald Reagan made the point, in his first inaugural address as president, that it was inappropriate to presume that military might alone made a country great--or secure. "Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no w

Edwin Black: Is A Life Sentence for Iowa Kosher Butcher Disproportionate Justice?

[Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust and previously investigated the life sentence given to Jonathan Pollard.] Some people don't mind if Sholom Rubashkin gets life in prison and rots behind bars until he dies. Others are outraged at the harsh treatment being meted out to Rubashkin and ask in disbelief, “What's going on?” Rubashkin is at the center of the torrid scandal swirling around the massively-investigated Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Post

Geoffrey R. Stone: The Protestant Seat on the Supreme Court

[Geoffrey R. Stone is Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.] With the announcement of the retirement of Justice Stevens, the question has arisen: Should President Obama nominate a Protestant to succeed him? Of the remaining justices, six are Catholic and two are Jewish. If President Obama does not nominate a Protestant, this will be the first time in American history when there will not be a Protestant on the Court. How should we think a

Alexei Bayer: Lenin's Scent Still Lingers over Russia

[Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.] During the Soviet era, Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum was the focal point of Red Square. It sat right in the middle of the square and was watched over by a military guard that changed at the stroke of the huge Kremlin clock in an elaborate goose-stepping ceremony. It was the center of the country’s political life, too — the only place where the average Russian saw his leaders in the flesh. The Politburo revi

Robert McFarlane: Mideast Peace, One Brick at a Time

[Mr. McFarlane served as President Reagan's national security adviser and is currently a member of the Leadership Council at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.] President Obama is reportedly considering a new Middle East strategy; a family of policies aimed not only at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute but also at creating a new regional security architecture to take on the challenges posed by Iran and other threats to American interests. It is a praise

Hadley Arkes: An Austen Chamberlain Moment for the Democrats

[Hadley Arkes is the Edward N. Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.] The points of caution have already been noted by conservative commentators: The public anger over the passage of Obamacare may well subside by November, especially if the economy continues its healing. And so the Democrats, having desperately gone for broke, may be delivered from their danger and find themselves surviving with wreckage

Melissa Harris-Lacewell: Barack Obama: Black by Choice

[Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, is completing her latest book, Sister Citizen: A Text for Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough.] President Obama created a bit of a stir in early April when he completed his Census form. In response to the question about racial identity the president indicated he was "Black, African American or Negro." Despite having been bor

Frank Rich: Welcome to Confederate History Month

[Frank Rich writes a column for the New York Times.] It's kind of like that legendary stunt on the prime-time soap "Dallas," where we learned that nothing bad had really happened because the previous season's episodes were all a dream. We now know that the wave of anger that crashed on the Capitol as the health care bill passed last month — the death threats and epithets hurled at members of Congress — was also a mirage.... I would be more than happy to stand