Roundup: Media's Take

Max Boot: The Goldstone Report

After reading the Goldstone Report on human-rights abuses committed during the Gaza War (December 27, 2008–January 19, 2009), all I can say is, it’s a good thing that the United Nations wasn’t around during World War II. I can just imagine its producing a supposedly evenhanded report that condemned the Nazis for “grave” abuses such as incinerating Jews, while also condemning the

Chip Ward: The End of Welfare Water and the Drying of the West

[Chip Ward told of his adventures as a grassroots organizer of campaigns to make polluters accountable in Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West. He is a TomDispatch.com regular and a former library administrator who now lives next to Capitol Reef National Park.] Pink snow is turning red in Colorado. Here on the Great American Desert -- specifically Utah's slickrock portion of it where I live -- hot 'n' dry means dust. When frequent high winds sweep across our increasingly

Bruce Judson: Economic Inequality: The Wall Street Journal Is Just Wrong

[Bruce Judson is a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management. He is the author of"It Could Happen Here: America on the Brink" which will be released by HarperCollins in October 2009.] For anyone with even a passing familiarity with issues associated with economic inequality, The Wall Street Journal front page story last week was shocking. It's use of bad data was a misuse of this important forum. In effect, the article says that economic inequality was

Richard Dreyfuss: We must resume teaching civics

[Dreyfuss, an actor, lives in Encinitas.] I have tried for years to find those words that could make you feel the dread I feel about one fact of American life: we do not teach civics in our public schools anymore. When you really think about that sentence, you begin to understand the selfishness, greed, denial, decay and the belief that the people are the audience, not the performance of America. America is a miracle and the whole world knows it except Ame

Michael Crowley: Why is Obama repeating Bush's Iraq mistakes...in Afghanistan?

[Michael Crowley is a journalist and political commentator for The New Republic.] With the Iraq war spinning out of control in mid-2005, retired Marine General James L. Jones spoke with his old friend Peter Pace, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jones, who is now Barack Obama's national security advisor, had been sounded out for the Joint Chiefs job but demurred. One reason: He felt that civilian leaders in Washington were warping the military planning process. &q

Sam Ferguson: Beating Up Thurgood Marshall

[Sam Ferguson is a Yale Law School Robina international human rights fellow.] Based on the tenor of the argument yesterday at the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court is poised to overrule the 1990 decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. If they do, corporations will be allowed to use general treasury funds to run advertisements and campaign on behalf of federal candidates. Corporate cash will flood our elections and special interests will be enshri

Mike Kohr: Tmes Marches On, But Not Always Forward

[Kohr is a Township Trustee and active in local politics and has for the last 14 years volunteered time lecturing at local schools on Native American history and culture.] In 1941, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two brothers, related to six US presidents, enlisted in the Army. In 1944, these brothers, Stanley and Ralph Dunham went ashore at Normandy and served their Nation fighting the Nazi's across France, Italy and Germany. Another young American, S

Steve Benen: Remember GWB?

[Steve Benen is"blogger in chief" of the popular Washington Monthly online blog, Political Animal. His background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian.] Following up on yesterday's item on the Bush economic policies creating something akin to a lost decade, reader C.G. reminded me of this item from Jim Kessler and Anne Kim in April.

Lee Siegel: Is Obama the New Nixon?

[Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.] Let’s all calm down. The Tea Party Express rally in Washington wasn’t the beginning of some political apocalypse that is going to plunge the country into civil war. If anything, its noisiness was inve

Catherine Rampell: Same Old Hope: This Bubble Is Different

[Catherine Rampell writes about economics and edits the Economix blog.] This time is different. That’s what people argue every time a bubble inflates, and what they think every time they are chastened by its popping. But century after century, decade after decade and year after year, human beings irrationally exuberate all over again. Not long ago, the housing bubble burst and brought the global economy to a standstill. Now economists, recognizing that bubb

Ross Douthat: The Ghosts of 1994

[Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008).] There are obvious parallels between Barack Obama’s push fo

Bill Whalen : Crime Makes a Comeback in California Politics

[Mr. Whalen is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.] There are so many politicians running for office in California with Silicon Valley roots that a Sacramento Bee reporter says next year could be the valley's political "coming out party." Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is running for U.S. Senate. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is running for governor, as are former high-tech entrepreneur and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and T

Gordon Crovitz: Free Speech, Now that Speech Is Free

[Gordon Crovitz is a media and information industry advisor and executive, including former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, executive vice president of Dow Jones and president of its Consumer Media Group.] The equivalent of the health-care debate a few years ago was the battle over the McCain-Feingold law, which was supposed to be the most important political reform in a generation. Instead, technology has already made this law outdated. McCain-Feingold, passed in

Harvey Wasserman: Will the Corporate Supremes now dance on democracy's corpse?

[Free Press Senior Editor and "Superpower of Peace" columnist Harvey Wasserman is also senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. He is author or co-author of a dozen books, including SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 and HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.] The Four Courtsmen of the Apocalypse are poised to finally bury American democracy in corporate money. The most powerful institution in human hi

Heidi Przybyla: Socialism Threat Has Long History for Health-Care Overhaul Foes

[Heidi Przybyla is a reporter for Bloomberg] Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The debate is about health care. The threat is of a march toward “socialism.” The words come from a famous voice. Not Sarah Palin in 2009. It was Ronald Reagan in 1961. “From here, it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism,” Reagan, then an actor, warned in a 1961 record sponsored by the American Medical Association after President John F. Kennedy created a commission that laid the

Ross Douthat: The Ghosts of 1994

[Ross Douthat is an Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times.] There are obvious parallels between Barack Obama’s push for health care reform and Bill Clinton’s ill-fated attempt 16 years ago. In both cases, an apparent legislative juggernaut hit a wall of public skepticism. Both presidents saw their poll numbers wilt in the summertime heat. Both White Houses staged a September address to Congress in an effort to regain the political initiative. We know how the story turne

James Carroll: Obama Must End 'Pottery Barn' Policy

[James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Globe.] President Obama's speech to Congress last week concluded on a moving and uplifting note, an evocation of the late Senator Kennedy’s appeal to the nation’s character and moral purpose as the ground of change. All at once, with his forceful display of leadership, the president had made the transformation of American society, beginning with health care reform, seem possible. But, like a dark storm cloud edging in from the horizon

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: We abandon the teaching of history at our peril (UK)

[Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes a weekly column in the Independent.] History may soon become extinct in our secondary schools, go the way of domestic science and handwriting classes, only less missed and less lamented than either. A major new study by the Historical Association and teacher training experts found that three out of 10 comprehensives no longer bother to teach the subject, which isn't part of the core curriculum after the age of 13. Only 30 per cent do GCSE history.

Albert R. Hunt: Obamacare Can't Win an All-In Wager

[Albert R. Hunt is the Executive Editor, Washington for Bloomberg News.] WASHINGTON — “Liberals have many tails,” the American writer and satirist H.L. Mencken observed, “and chase them all.” The fate of the Obama health care initiative could rest in large part with some members of his party’s left wing, who threaten to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Several dozen members of the House of Representatives, a few senators and the incoming head of the A.F.L.-C.I.

Stephen Hess: America's Top Dynasty?

[Stephen Hess, a senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, was on the Eisenhower and Nixon White House staffs and advised Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the author of"America's Political Dynasties" and his most recent book is"What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect."] American public life is saturated with them. Kennedys. Bushes. Clintons. Powerful individuals connected to one another by blood or by marriage who, deservedly or not, take on that most parad