Roundup: Media's Take

Spencer Dew: Is the Devil a Black Man?

[Spencer Dew is an instructor in the department of theology at Loyola University, Chicago. He wrote this article for Sightings, published by the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.] In what has now become a much-circulated clip, Pat Robertson makes sense of the catastrophic Haitian earthquake as the latest in a string of curses delivered by God to Haiti’s people. Robertson’s interpretation of this catastrophe, whether we find it repellent or compelling

Michael Barone: The Harshest Repudiation of a President Since 1974

[Mr. Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of"The Almanac of American Politics 2010" (National Journal).] ...Scott Brown's 52% victory over Ms. Coakley's 47%, in the state that in the last four presidential elections voted more Democratic than any other, is the harshest repudiation of a president since Democrat Richard Vander Veen won Gerald Ford's House seat in Michigan in 1974 by a 51%-44% margin.

David Ignatius: Haiti Quake has Parallels with Lisbon

[David Ignatius is associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post] ...Talking about the Haitian earthquake, my friend Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, recommended a book called "Evil in Modern Thought," by the philosopher Susan Neiman. Her starting point in discussing how people respond to evil events was the 1755 earthquake that destroyed Lisbon, Portugal, and killed at least 15,000 people. The Lisbon ear

Alastair Campbell: We have learnt the wrong lessons from Iraq

[The writer was spokesman and strategist for Tony Blair 1994-2003.] Britain is at war in Afghanistan. It does not feel like it for a population for whom the concept of war remains defined by the second world war with its millions of deaths and bombs falling on London. But war it is. Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry last week, when asked what lessons I thought we should learn, I expressed my fear that because of the controversies surrounding the communication of the I

Daniel Henniger: The Fall of the House of Kennedy

[Daniel Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.] Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts will not endure unless Republicans clearly understand the meaning of "the machine" that he ran against and defeated. Yes, it is about a general revulsion at government spending, what is sometimes called "the blob." But blobs are shapeless things, and in the days ahead we will see the Obama White House work hard to reshape the blob into a d

Bret Stephens: To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid

[Bret Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] It's been a week since Port-au-Prince was destroyed by an earthquake. In the days ahead, Haitians will undergo another trauma as rescue efforts struggle, and often fail, to keep pace with unfolding emergencies. After that—and most disastrously of all—will be the arrival of the soldiers of do-goodness, each with his brilliant plan to save Haitians from themselves. "Haiti needs a

Gary Pierre-Pierre: Haiti's struggles originate from its blood-soaked history

[Garry Pierre-Pierre is the editor and publisher of Haitian Times, which he founded in 1999. The English language weekly serves New York's 500,000-strong Haitian community.] Whenever someone has asked me what will it take to turn Haiti around, I have always warned them that my answer is meant to be sardonic. 'It's going to take a large natural disaster hitting Haiti,' I would say. 'In its aftermath, more than 200,000 will die and misery will be parceled out to all regardless of skin

Denis MacShane: The Iraq Inquiry and the Rewriting of History

[Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and was Minister of State at the Foreign Office 2002-2005.] Which of the many senior politicians caught in the long-running debate over the Iraq conflict said that Saddam Hussein "most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capacity" and that the now famous dossier "contains confirmation of information that we either knew or most certainly should have been willing to assume?"

Fyodor Lukyanov: The Well of Soviet Nostalgia Is Running Dry

[Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.] Last week, the government criticized a bill that would have made it a criminal offense to deny the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. United Russia deputies had introduced the measure last year. In December, President Dmitry Medvedev and then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went on record saying the crimes of Josef Stalin could not be justified in any way. The rowdy campaign conducted by the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth group to

Melissa Harris-Lacewell: How Barack Obama is like Martin Luther King, Jr.

[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.] All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. –Martin Luther King, Jr. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency on the anniversary of Martin L

Aaron Miller: Obama's First Year

[Aaron Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is the author of "The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace." His book "Can America Have Another Great President?" will be published in 2012.] With his poll numbers shrinking and pending healthcare legislation more controversial than ever, President Obama's critics are celebrating his much-diminished presidency.... Still,

John L. Jackson Jr.: Hegel and Haiti

[John L. Jackson Jr. is Penn Integrates Knowledge professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University] There are many reasonable people (and even some otherwise unreasonable ones) who would maintain that Pat Robertson's take on the recent earthquake in Haiti need not be dignified with a response. I understand that point, and I see where its adherents are coming from. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that Robertson's position represents

Joshua Keating: Haiti, the Unluckiest Country

[Joshua Keating is associate editor at Foreign Policy.] The second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere has been wracked by coups, dictators, and foreign interventions throughout nearly its entire history. But you don't have to agree with Pat Robertson to agree that even by Haitian standards, the last few decades have been particularly tragic. The Duvalier Dictatorship Years: 1957-1986 The catastrophe: After a period of instability in the

Rosslyn Smith: The Brown-Coakley Race, 1978 Minnesota Version

Some analysts are wondering about historical analogies to what seems to have happened in the Massachusetts special election. My mind immediately went back to the first major race in which I served as a volunteer. In 1978 a Minnesota Republican who had been David who? on Labor Day won the special election for the remaining four years of the late Hubert Humphrey's Senate term with 62% of the vote. Many of the elements helping Brown today also helped David Durenberger's upset victory

Robert Parry: Lessons from America's Lost Decade

As the United States takes the measure of Barack Obama's first year in the White House and looks beyond to what could be a difficult new decade, it might be useful to first stop and extract some lessons from the 2000s, which proved to be a lost economic decade for many Americans. For the first time since the Great Depression, the United States experienced zero job growth in a decade. Zero. And zero is actually worse than it sounds since none of the preceding six decades registered j

Roger Cohen: China Remembers the Cultural Revolution

The tombstones loomed in the dusk, some of them rising more than 25 feet, each telling a forgotten story of China’s troubled history. I had come to find them because, for the first time, China has sanctioned the preservation here of a site commemorating the numberless victims of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.... ...[T]he decision, made last month by authorities in this gritty central Chinese city, to designate a cemetery containing the remains of 573 people slaughtered during the

Ira Chernus: Martin Luther King's Legacy and Israel's Future

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.] Every year, apologists for Israel’s occupation of Palestine eagerly await Martin Luther King Day. Then they trot out these words, spoken by Dr. King shortly before his death: “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism." King, who repeated the themes that really mattered to him -- justice, freedom, human dignity, nonviolence -- over an

Elizabeth Dickinson: Is the Pinochet era finally over?

[Elizabeth Dickinson is an assistant editor of Foreign Policy magazine.] By 6 o'clock Sunday night, the news had filled the streets of Santiago with honking: For the first time in 52 years, Chile had elected a conservative president, unseating the left-leaning "Concertación" coalition that has ruled the country for the last two decades. From a crowded hotel ballroom at the Crown Plaza in Santiago, a posh-looking crowd of supporters for the winning candidate, billionaire bu

Nick Cohen: Blair will never be branded a war criminal

Consider the response of liberal Europeans to the last 40 years of Iraqi history. From 1968, an authentically fascist state confronted them, complete with the supreme leader, the unremitting reign of terror, the gassing of ethnic minorities and the unprovoked wars of conquest. America and Britain had, to their shame, been complicit in the oppression, but in 2003 they overthrew the tyrant thinking that he still possessed the weapons he used against the Kurds and the Iranians. He didn't and the oc

Eleanor Clift: A Modern-Day LBJ?

[Eleanor Clift is a contributing editor for Newsweek.] The Republican riff on President Obama's first year is that he hasn't accomplished anything, that he's all hat and no cattle, to borrow a phrase from the Bush years. At the same time, conservatives yowl that all the socialistic programs and policies he's put in place are destroying the country. Which is it? He can't be both unaccomplished and accomplishing his nefarious agenda at the same time. It's like that old Borscht Belt jo