Roundup: Media's Take

David Brooks: The Populist Addiction

Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists.... ...it’s easy to see the seductiveness of populism. Nonetheless, it nearly always fails. The history of populism, going back to William Jennings Bryan, is generally a histor

Michael C. Dorf: The Supreme Court Rejects a Limit on Corporate-Funded Campaign Speech

[Michael C. Dorf, a FindLaw columnist is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell University. He is the author of No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the Twenty-First Century and he blogs at michaeldorf.org.] Last week, in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of federal election law that forbids corporations and unions from spending their general treasury funds to support or oppose candidates for federal office. The ruling is significant in i

E.J. Dionne: The Urgency of a Teddy Roosevelt Moment

"Populism" is the most overused and misused word in the lexicon of commentary. But thanks to a reckless decision by Chief Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court and also the greed of the nation's financial barons, we have reached a true populist moment in American politics. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision last week giving American corporations the right to unlimited political spending was an astonishing display of judicial arrogance, overreach and unjustified activism.

Ranj Alaaldin: 'Chemical Ali' and Blair, the hero

[Ranj Alaaldin is a Middle East political and security risk analyst based at the London School of Economics and Political Science.] Ali Hassan al-Majid, the infamous general and henchman of Saddam Hussein, was executed yesterday for his genocidal onslaught on the Kurdish population of Halabja in 1988. Many of the 5,000 Kurds killed that day died almost instantly as the cloud of poison gas settled upon them. Others suffered a slower, more gruesome death as the gas gradua

Michael White: Is it fair to blame Blair and Bush for continued violence in Iraq?

[Michael White is assistant editor and has been writing for the Guardian for over 30 years, as a reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist.] As the tumbrels and the bounty hunters converge on the Chilcot inquiry for Friday's climactic appearance by Tony Blair it may be worth a backward glance at what's going on in Iraq nearly seven years after the fateful US-UK invasion. Not much of a backward glance is needed. Today's papers are full of chilling detail

William McGurn: Clinton's Shadow Hangs Over Obama's Address

[William McGurn is a Vice President at News Corporation who writes speeches for CEO Rupert Murdoch. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush.] He's baaaaack. When the president enters the House chamber tomorrow night to deliver his maiden State of the Union address, members of Congress, the press, and the public will see Barack Obama at the podium. But they will have Bill Clinton on their minds. Specifically they will be think

Soumitra R. Eachempati, Dean Lorich and David Helfet: Haiti ... Obama's Katrina

[Dr. Eachempati is a trauma surgeon and incoming president of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons. Drs. Lorich and Helfet are orthopedic surgeons. All practice at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.] Four years ago the initial medical response to Hurricane Katrina was ill equipped, understaffed, poorly coordinated and delayed. Criticism of the paltry federal efforts was immediate and fierce. Unfortunately, the response to the l

Sami Moubayed: Notorious 'Chemical Ali' Meets His End

[Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.] Three big stories came out of the Arab world on Monday, starting with the explosion of an Ethiopian airplane in the skies off Beirut, which led to the death of all 90 passengers, on to three deadly attacks in Baghdad, which killed 37 people, and finally, the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the notorious cousin of Saddam Hussein. The death of Majid - known as "Chemical Ali" - has caused a stir

Roger Pulvers: For all His Failings, MacArthur was a Fine Precursor of Obama's Bow

Two photographs, separated in time and context by 64 years, may symbolize, as well as anything can, the nature of the postwar Japanese-American alliance. Both in their time gave rise to uproar. The second of these was the photograph, taken on the occasion of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Japan in November 2009, of the president bowing low to the Emperor. Despite the fact that such bowing in Japan is a gesture of respect and propriety, the American media went semi-postal, an

Nina Hachigian: The false promise of primacy in U.S. foreign policy

[Nina Hachigian is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the co-author of “The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise.”] One unquestionable success of the Obama administration so far has been to turn the page on the failed Bush foreign policy framework. Not so, says Robert Kagan, who reveals a perverse nostalgia for the previous paradigm in his recent writings in which he argues that the Obama administration is formulating

Marci A. Hamilton: The Election of Scott Brown, the Newfound Power of Independents, and Why the Framers Would Be Smilings [sic]

[Marci Hamilton, a FindLaw columnist, is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge 2008).] On Tuesday, January 19, the people of Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to represent them in the United States Senate. If there had been any doubt after the election of President Barack Obama, it should now be crystal-clear to all following Brown's election: Independent vote

Jim Sleeper: How the Roberts Court Announced Its Coup in September

Sometimes the best way to understand current events is to follow undercurrents that drive them. To understand the Supreme Court's rollback of regulations on corporate electioneering in Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission, follow the Court's conservative majority as it actually discussed the case on September 9. What the Justices said was drowned out by the chatter about President Obama's big speech to Congress on health care that same day. But the consequences

Lawrence M. Krauss: The Doomsday Clock Keeps Ticking

[Lawrence M. Krauss is co-chairman of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is a professor at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration and its physics department, and is founding director of its Origins Project.] Last week, on behalf of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, I announced that the Doomsday Clock -- established in 1947 by scientists who had worked on the first atomic bomb in 1945 -- was to be moved back by one minute from i

Erwin Chemerinsky: Conservatives Embrace Judicial Activism

[Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.] The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision holding that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money in election campaigns is a stunning example of judicial activism by its five most conservative justices. In striking down a federal statute and explicitly overturning prior decisions, the court has changed the nature of elections in the United States. At the same time, the conservative justices have demonstrated that d

Doug Bandow: Beware Crusader Temptation in Afghanistan

[Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the author of several books, including "Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire" (Xulon).] Afghanistan has become a target of aggressive pro-war activists in America, including feminists who believe in waging war to improve the status of women. Many on the left believed military intervention abroad to be a logical extension of its attemp

Mark Danner: To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature

[Mark Danner is the author, most recently, of “Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War,” which chronicles political conflict in Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the United States.] Haiti is everybody’s cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all by its suffering. Epithets of misery clatter after its name like a ball and chain: Poorest country

Hugh Fitzgerald: Lawrence of Arabia as an American Strategist? God Forbid

[Hugh Fitzgerald is a contributor to Jihad Watch.] Ever since the "surge that worked," I've been wondering about General Petraeus, and even more about those Leavenworth colonels, the ones of whom so much was made as the army's intellectuals. These were the people who, during the "surge," discovered and used lessons offered by previously overlooked "experts" on insurgency - David Galula, in the French campaign in Algeria, comes immediately to min

James Taranto: W II

[James Taranto is a columnist and editor for the Wall Street Journal.]President Obama has been widely mocked for the following comment:"Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office," the president said in an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos."People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last

John Nichols: A History of Campaign Finance

[John Nichols is a columnist for The Nation.] More than one hundred years ago, after a 1904 president race that saw big life insurance companies pour money into the project of electing Republican Teddy Roosevelt, the defeated Democratic candidate, Judge Alton Parker, raised the question of whether presidents and congresses would simply be bought by corporations seeking policies that favored their interests. "The greatest moral question which now confronts us is: Sh

G. John Ikenberry and Charles A. Kupchan: A New Japan, a New Asia

[G. John Ikenberry is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Charles A. Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.] This week marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan alliance, but the Obama administration seems sincerely flummoxed as to whether to bemoan or commemorate the occasion.... As the Obama administration struggles to sort out its Japan