Roundup: Media's Take

Barak M. Seener: Targeting Israelis via International Law

[Barak Seener is the Greater Middle East section director of the Henry Jackson Society.] Based on principles derived from the Hague and Geneva conventions, individuals have been brought to trial for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. The outstanding examples of such trials were those held at Nuremberg after World War II where numbers of leading Nazis were brought to court for some of the many crimes committed by Germany under the Third Reich. The shadow o

AKMuckraker: The Ugly Irony of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue

[AKMuckraker, Jeanne Devon is the proprietor of themudflats.net] Going Rogue is the title of Sarah Palin's soon-to-be released memoir. It's cute, it's catchy and it will sell some books. The 400-page tome will hit the shelves on November 17th, with a massive first printing of 1.5 million copies. And each one of those book jackets is another jab at two of the many casualties of the Palin administration in Alaska. Politico reports that the phrase has its roots in an Oct.

Michael Lind: The end of the Pax Americana?

[Michael Lind is a columnist for Salon Magazine.] While the economic crisis continues to overshadow other topics, world politics is undergoing rapid and dramatic changes. In areas from national security policy to trade, the Obama administration has repudiated Bush-era precedents significantly, if not rapidly enough for some critics on the left. The pressures on the administration to continue in the path followed by U.S. administrations since the fall of the Berlin Wall are intense,

NYT Editorial: An Incomplete State Secrets Fix

One of the ways that the Bush administration tried to avoid accountability for its serious misconduct in the name of fighting terrorism was the misuse of an evidentiary rule called the state secrets privilege. The Obama administration has essentially embraced the Bush approach in existing cases, trying to toss out important lawsuits alleging kidnapping, torture and unlawful wiretapping without any evidence being presented. The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. issued new g

David Brooks: The Next Culture War

[David Brooks's Op-Ed column in The New York Times started in September 2003. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and he is currently a commentator on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer."] Centuries ago, historians came up with a classic theory to explain the rise and decline of nations. The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power

E.D. Hirsch Jr.: How Schools Fail Democracy

[E.D. Hirsch Jr. is founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. His most recent book, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools, was just published by Yale University Press.] Recent town-hall meetings on health care were contentious and none too civil. Yet there was a bright spot beneath the rancor. Some participants managed to communicate effectively in grammatical sentences, using standard pronunciation, vocabulary, an

Michael Lind: The end of the Pax Americana?

[Michael Lind is a Senior Research Fellow and Policy Director of New America's Economic Growth Program.] While the economic crisis continues to overshadow other topics, world politics is undergoing rapid and dramatic changes. In areas from national security policy to trade, the Obama administration has repudiated Bush-era precedents significantly, if not rapidly enough for some critics on the left. The pressures on the administration to continue in the path followed by U.S. administ

Vladimir Ryzhkov: Russia Loves to Hate America

[Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.] In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly last week, U.S. President Barack Obama said we are entering a new historical era. He declared that the United States would cease taking unilateral actions and called on all people of all nations to join together in combating the challenges facing the world. Obama said we need the “cooperative effort of the whole world.”

Liam Fox: History does not show that war in Afghanistan is unwinnable

[Taken from a speech by the Shadow Defence Secretary given yesterday at the International Institute for Strategic Studies; www.iiss.org.] We can describe failure in Afghanistan, but can we describe success? What does our idea of winning look like? Success in Afghanistan will be achieved when we have a stable enough Afghanistan, able to manage its own internal and external security to a degree that stops interference from outside powers and allowing

Humberto Fontova: Advice from Fidel Castro for Ahmadinejad and Gadhafi

[[Humberto Fontova is the author of 'Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.' Visit www.hfontova.com] Ahmadinejad and Gadhafi got many New York doors slammed in their face this week. The Helmsley Hotels hurriedly hung "No Vacancy!" signs and Gotham Hall canceled Ahmadinejad's reservation for the site as a speech and banquet hall. Gadhafi was finally reduced to sleeping on the couch of the Libyan UN ambassad

Justin Elliott: Man Behind Birthermercial First Teabagged In Mid-1970s

[Justin Elliott is a reporter-blogger at TPMmuckraker.] The attorney behind the first-ever Birther infomercial started teabagging way before it was cool. Back in the mid 1970s, Gary Kreep spearheaded a national tea bag-based movement to protest the Ford Administration's tax policies, he confirmed to TPMmuckraker today."To protest unreasonably high taxes, people stapled tea bags to their tax returns," explains Kreep, now director of the United States Justice

WSJ Editorial: William Safire, A competitor who had our back when we needed him.

In economic and foreign policy, as in fashion and music, the 1970s were largely a miserable decade. But out of that woeful time arose a generation of conservative giants in journalism and public life, among them the New York Times columnist William Safire, who died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at age 79. From 1973 to 2005, Bill Safire prowled American politics in twice-weekly columns that kept the political class honest and his readers entertained and informed. Usually he was toug

Will Bunch: William Safire, "nattering nabobs" and the power of words

[Will Bunch is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News] William Safire, the former Nixon speechwriter turned New York Times op-ed columnist, died today at age 79. He did more than any other American over the last generation to get people talking about words and phrases and the way that we use them. That makes it hard to find the perfect words to say about his passing. His life and his voluminous writings taught us that words have not only poetry -- and sometimes roots as intr

Steven J. Erlanger: In Bad Times for Capitalism, Socialists in Europe Suffer

[Steven J. Erlanger is an American journalist who has been the Paris bureau chief for The New York Times since 2008.] PARIS — A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse. Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a

Jackson Lears: The Waxing and Waning of America’s Political Right

[Jackson Lears is editor in chief of Raritan: A Quarterly Review and the author, most recently, of “Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920.”] One puzzling feature of American politics is that the people who call themselves conservatives seldom want to conserve anything. The modern conservative movement promotes radical transformation while ignoring classical conservative ideas — for example, Edmund Burke’s respect for established institutions and customs, for c

Jackson Lears: The Waxing and Waning of America’s Political Right

[Jackson Lears is editor in chief of Raritan: A Quarterly Review and the author, most recently, of “Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920.”] One puzzling feature of American politics is that the people who call themselves conservatives seldom want to conserve anything. The modern conservative movement promotes radical transformation while ignoring classical conservative ideas — for example, Edmund Burke’s respect for established institutions and customs, for c

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett: How to Press the Advantage With Iran

[Flynt Leverett is the director of the Iran project at the New America Foundation and a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University. Hillary Mann Leverett is the president of a political risk consultancy. Both are former National Security Council staff members.] TEHRAN’S disclosure that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qum has derailed the Obama administration’s already faltering efforts to engage with Iran. The United St

William McGurn: Obama v. Bush, the Sequel

[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.] While campaigning for president, Barack Obama arguably ran as much against George W. Bush as he did against John McCain. All across America, Candidate Obama hammered home his message. Mr. McCain represented "the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the past eight years."

Frank Rich: Obama at the Precipice

[Frank Rich is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times] THE most intriguing, and possibly most fateful, news of last week could not be found in the health care horse-trading in Congress, or in the international zoo at the United Nations, or in the Iran slapdown in Pittsburgh. It was an item tucked into a blog at ABCNews.com. George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read book” for President Obama’s war team is “Lessons in Disaster” by Gordon M. Goldstein, a foreign-policy

Tim Chambers: Apple's Lesson -- Innovating Our Way Out of the Recovery From Hell

[Tim Chambers is a Principal at Dewey Square Group (DSG) and co-founder of Dewey Digital, the new media arm of DSG.] "We decided to innovate our way through this downturn, so that we would be further ahead of our competitors when things turn up." The "downturn" was not the Great Recession of 2008. It was the 2001 recession that was fading (after about three years) at the time these words were said. The speaker was Steve Jobs and the "innovations