Roundup: Media's Take

Juliet Lapidos: Is Obama the first president to get heckled during an address to Congress?

[Juliet Lapidos is a writer and editorial assistant at Slate] A Republican representative from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, heckled President Obama during his speech to Congress Wednesday night. In response to Obama's statement that the proposed health care bill would not cover illegal immigrants, Wilson shouted, "You lie!" House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "I have never in my 29 years heard an outburst of that nature with reference to a president of the United S

Max Blumenthal: Joe Wilson's Strange Friends

[Max Blumenthal is the author of the just-published book, Republican Gomorrah.] Since Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina bellowed at President Barack Obama, “You lie!” during the president’s nationally televised speech on health care, the fourth-term backbencher has emerged as a hero for the conservative grassroots. One of the most enthusiastic endorsements of Wilson’s histrionics came from the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group that Wilson has belonged to accordi

WSJ Editorial: The Kerry Constancy

John Kerry, the former junior Senator from Massachusetts, was back in Boston Wednesday, urging the state legislature to change the law governing U.S. Senate vacancies. The seat held by Edward Kennedy from 1962 until his death last month is to be filled in a January special election. Mr. Kerry, echoing a letter Kennedy wrote not long before he died, asked lawmakers to enact legislation allowing Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a Senator to serve in the interim. "What Ted propos

Fouad Ajami: 9/11 and the 'Good War'

[Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and an adjunct fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is the author, among other books, of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2007).] The road that led to 9/11 was never a defining concern of President Barack Obama. But he returned to 9/11 as he sought to explain and defend the war in Afghanistan in a speech to the Veterans of F

Benjamin Schwarz: What the histories of the Depression era tell us about middle-class families in crisis, both then and now

[Benjamin Schwarz is The Atlantic’s literary editor and national editor.] NOT TO BE faux-populist about it, but although such matters as the electoral turmoil in Iran, the Bernanke/Lewis he said/he said, and the bloating of the list of Oscar finalists (to take the week of June 21) constitute what Charlie Rose and his knowing ilk like to think of as the national discussion, I suspect that an altogether different set of concerns haunts the commuter driving home, is fumbled over on the

Dr. Wilmer Leon: Afghanistan/Pakistan a New Vietnam?

[Dr. Wilmer Leon is the producer/host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program "On With Leon" and a Teaching Associate in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email wjl3us@yahoo.com.] Under the pretext of responding to the September 11, 2001, attacks in America, the United States and Great Britain invaded Afghanist

Rich Noyes: Today's Push for ObamaCare Matches Media Spin for HillaryCare in 1990s

[Rich Noyes is Research Director at the Media Research Center.] With President Obama pitching his version of health reform before a joint session of Congress, it recalls Bill Clinton’s 1993 speech to Congress on the same topic. The media spin back then sounds eerily familiar:"reform" would end the"shame" of America being the only industrialized nation without universal coverage; a bigger role for government would cost nothing or even save money in the long run; and government bureau

Eamon Javers: Echoes of Clinton in Obama speech

The similarities are striking: Sixteen years ago, another Democratic president stood in the same spot in the same month and addressed the nation on the same topic. Behind Bill Clinton sat a Democratic Speaker of the House and his vice president. It was the same Wednesday night with Barack Obama. And a POLITICO analysis of the transcript of both speeches shows a striking similarity in the words used by both presidents. Both presidents argued that the cost of doing nothin

Rudy Ruiz: Obama as teacher-in-chief

[Rudy Ruiz founded RedBrownandBlue.com, a site featuring multicultural political commentary. He is host of a nationally syndicated Spanish-language radio show and wrote a guide to success for immigrants ("¡Adelante!" published by Random House). He is co-founder and president of Interlex, an advocacy marketing agency based in San Antonio, Texas.] Perhaps we got too used to living in a nation where the president inevitably becomes persona non grata. Mayb

Conn Hallinan: Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?

[Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.] One of the oddest — indeed, surreal — encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How can Washington avoid the kind of defeat it suffered in Southea

John Feehery: Why we don't heckle the president

[John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. He is president of Feehery Group, a Washington-based advocacy firm that has represented clients that include News Corp., Ford Motor Co. and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He formerly was a government relations executive vice president for the Motion Picture Association of America.] WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When I worked in the House of Representatives in the mid-'90s, Congressional Republic

Supna Zaidi: Saving Pakistan From Itself

[Supna Zaidi is assistant director of Islamist Watch, a project at the Middle East Forum and editor of Muslim World Today.] Despite being born at the same time as India, Pakistan seems to be regressing while India becomes an increasingly influential player in global politics. This is because Pakistan has refused to end the feudal system unlike India. Pakistani land reforms were first attempted in the 1950s by General Mohammad Ayub Khan's government, who wanted, among other social im

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler: (A Street) By Any Other Name (Israel)

[Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler are Jerusalem-based reporters and documentary filmmakers.] Intrepid international travelers arriving in Israel may well be getting on their mobiles soon to upbraid their travel agent for sending them to an unknown destination. “Where on earth are we? It reads here: ‘Welcome to NATBAG.’” Unless they know their languages, even travelers comfortable with geography will have good reason to feel disoriented: “NATBAG” is an acronym for t

Ronald Asmus: Europe and the Obama Bounce

[Ronald Asmus is executive director of German Marshall Fund in Brussels.] European attitudes toward the United States have experienced up and downs during past decades — with significant drops in support during the Vietnam war, the Euromissile crisis of the early 1980s or the war in Kosovo in 1999. But never before in the history of trans-Atlantic polling have we seen the kind of plunge that took place under George W. Bush. That drop occurred during the president’s fir

Norman Podhoretz : Why Are Jews Liberals?

[Mr. Podhoretz was the editor of Commentary from 1960 to 1995. His latest book, "Why Are Jews Liberals?" is just out from Doubleday.] One of the most extraordinary features of Barack Obama's victory over John McCain was his capture of 78% of the Jewish vote. To be sure, there was nothing extraordinary about the number itself. Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religi

Kristen Gerenche: What California's history means for nation's health-reform efforts

[Kristen Gerencher is a San Francisco-based reporter covering personal finance issues. She also writes the Vital Signs column. She previously worked in the KGO-TV’s consumer unit and holds a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.] Two years ago, California was where the nation finds itself today: Very close to passing sweeping health-care reform. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was past the halfway point in the

Christopher Hayes: Overcoming America's Debt Overhang ... The Case for Inflation

[Christopher Hayes is the Washington D.C. Editor of The Nation.] ... Historical parallels for our current predicament are difficult to come by. But given that fiscal scolds, inflation fear-mongers, and other critics point to the levels of government of debt rising to WWII levels, it is worth looking at just how the United States recovered from that period of unprecedented debt. The answer, to simplify a bit, was growth and inflation, with the two likely reinforcing each other. From

Irwin Stelzer: U.K. and U.S. Can Repair Relationship

[Irwin Stelzer is the director of the centre for economics policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and editor of the book Neoconservatism.] So Scotland Yard is complaining that its overly "edgy" American counterparts almost blew the arrest of the terrorists convicted this week of plotting to blow up several transatlantic flights, by moving prematurely to have one of them arrested in Pakistan. It just shows, say those who deny there is a "special relationship" bet

Robert Parry: Ronald Reagan's Torture

[Parry is an investigative journalist who has worked for the AP and Newsweek. He most recently founded Consortium News, an investigative news e-zine.]Lost amid the attention given George W. Bush’s “war on terror” torture policies was the CIA’s cryptic admission that it also engaged in interrogation abuses during Ronald Reagan’s anti-leftist wars in Central America, another era of torture and extra-judicial killings. The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, relea

Peter Osnos: What Would Liebling Say Today?

[Peter Osnos is founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs books and a senior media fellow at The Century Foundation which distributes this weekly “Platform” column. (An archive of the columns is available at www.tcf.org.) He is vice-chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and executive director of The Caravan Project, which is also based at The Century Foundation.] A. J. Liebling was the principal writer of the New Yorker's "Wayward Pres