Roundup: Media's Take

Ian Black: West Bank settlements: an impassable obstacle on the road to peace

[Ian Black is the Middle East editor for guardian.co.uk.] On a ridge high above the West Bank town of Nablus, a cluster of red roofs and neat white concrete homes mark the Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh, its security patrols on alert for attackers like the lone Palestinian gunman who mowed down four residents during the second intifada. Elon Moreh was founded in 1979, but the name is mentioned in Genesis as the site of the Patriarch Abraham's first sojourn in the prom

David Michael Green: My Country, Misery

[David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.] So... Tom Ridge came clean this week. Woo-hoo. What a brave and selfless act. Reminds me of Colin Powell completely and totally kinda sorta dissing the Iraq invasion. Great to hear that everything we knew and said and got clobbered for saying at the time was in fact true. Thanks a lot, General. That's really helpful. Not so great about the whole timing thing though

Paul Krugman: All the President’s Zombies

The debate over the “public option” in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a <em>government program</em>. Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that s

Bernard Keenan: Secret prisons and sovereignty, the 'state of exception' throughout history

[Bernard Keenan works in immigration law in London.] Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demanded that the Obama administration release information on 600 detainees held at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. The request mirrors that made to the Bush administration seven years before, regarding the men held in Guantánamo Bay. The continued use of secret prisons to hold detainees – some not captured in the Afghan conflict, but brought to Bagram from elsewhere

Tom Johnson: What LBJ would do

[Tom Johnson, who served as one of LBJ's White House press secretaries, is former chief executive of CNN News Group and former publisher of the Los Angeles Times.] LBJ would: Have a list of every member of Congress on his desk. He would be on the telephone with members (and their key staffers) constantly: "Your president really needs your vote on this bill." He would have a list of every special request every member wanted -- f

Paul Krugman: Reaganism Is a Failed Economic Belief

[Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton and a columnist for The Times, won the Economics Nobel in 2008.] The debate over the “public option” in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a governmen

Amr Hamzawy and Jeffrey Christiansen: Will Obama Drop Bush's Hamas Plan?

[Amr Hamzawy is a senior associate and Jeffrey Christiansen is a researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.] When will President Obama abandon the Bush doctrine of isolating Hamas? During a press conference in Gaza City a few weeks ago, Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, declared: “If there is a real project that aims at resolving the Palestinian cause on establishing a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, under full Palestinian sovereignty, we will suppo

Tim and Alissa Birkel: Bush Derangement Syndrome, Deficit Edition: Still Crazy After All These Years

Unfortunately, it seems that the reports of a cure for Bush Derangement Syndrome have been premature. Either that, or Paul Begala hasn’t gotten his shots yet. On last night’s episode of Anderson Cooper 360, during a news story on the government’s new estimates adding another $2 trillion to the national deficit, Begala agreed that Obama is up a creek with no paddle in regards to the deficit. However, he claimed that the President “inherited” that creek from The One the Left Loves to Hate, George

Doyle McManus: Reform ... Where Bush missed, Obama has a shot

[Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has reported on national and international issues from Washington for more than 25 years.] Four years ago, after a hard-fought election campaign, a president tried to use his newly won mandate to reform a program that touched every American family: Social Security. President George W. Bush soon discovered that his mandate wasn't nearly as powerful as he thought. Even though Bush promised that current pensioners' benefit

Gabriel Schoenfeld: Why Should We Underwrite Russian Rearmament?

[Mr. Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a resident scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, is the author of the forthcoming "Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law" (W.W. Norton).] It was Clare Boothe Luce who came up with the aphorism "No good deed goes unpunished." This maxim accurately sums up U.S. efforts to help Russia dismantle its aging nuclear arsenal. When the Soviet Union dissolved two deca

Andrew Leonard: Hu Jintao is no Kaiser Wilhelm

[Andrew Leonard is a senior staff writer for Salon.] For an academic historian, Niall Ferguson throws more than his share of bombs in the popular press. Just a couple of weeks ago he compared President Barack Obama to Felix the Cat -- both were/are black and "very, very lucky." Two years ago, he labeled birth control and abortion "vices" that were preventing a Malthusian human overpopulation disaster. More recently, he has been chattering about an upcoming "

Frank Rich: The Guns of August

[Frank Rich is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.] “It is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun — you don’t have to spell out the “b

Bryan Fischer: Madison would veto health care forthwith

Bryan Fischer is the host of Focal Point, part of the American Family Association.] My good friend Adam Graham points out that James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution and the father of the Bill of Rights, once vetoed a bill that would have provided federal funding for canals and roads on the grounds that building canals and roads is not one of the “enumerated powers” given to the federal government in the Constitution. Said Madison in his veto message,

Steve Benen: Try Things the LBJ Way?

[Steve Benen a political journalist who writes a blog for the Washington Monthly.] Matt Yglesias shares a story today about Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi, a far-right Democrat back in the Dixiecrat era, that I hadn't heard in a while. It's has quite a bit of relevance to current events."Eastland's chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee obviously made passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 impossible. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and President Lyndon J

NYT Editorial: Camp Ashraf

In a letter to a British parliamentarian last month, a senior State Department official insisted that the United States was “doing its utmost” to ensure that Iraq’s government would treat 3,400 Iranian exiles living at Camp Ashraf in eastern Iraq “humanely.” Two weeks later, a clash between the exiles and Iraqi police left 11 Iranians dead, and 36 were taken into custody by Iraqi forces. Americans troops had guarded the camp since 2003, but recently handed over responsibility to Ira

Seth Lipsky: Kim Dae Jung's Lesson

[Mr. Lipsky, a former member of the Journal's editorial board, is founding editor of the New York Sun.] The life of free Korea's ex-president, Kim Dae Jung, which came to an end this week, gives new meaning to the phrase "sunshine soldier." In some respects he was like Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, who died last month, a hero of the struggle for democracy in Asia. In other respects, however, Kim had a story that was more complex and dangerous—one that stands as a cau

Rep. John Conyers: Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch and Media Bias

[Rep. John Conyers is a Congressman from Michigan.] In today's Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove says that I -- and others -- owe him an apology for allegations that have been made about him during the course of the House Judiciary Committee's investigation into the dismissal of United States Attorneys and related issues about the politicization of the Department of Justice. Mr. Rove's self-serving assertions on this subject are simply inconsistent with the documents that

Cynthia P. Schneider: The Lockerbie Trial: A Unique Moment in International Justice and Diplomacy

[Cynthia P. Schneider was the U.S. Ambassador to Netherlands during Lockerbie trial.] The understandable outrage at the release of convicted terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi , found guilty of the bombing of Pan Am 103, should not overshadow the memory of the trial that brought Megrahi to justice. It was an extraordinary example of international cooperation, justice, and diplomacy. Early in the morning on May 3, 2000, I approached the compound in Zeist, the Netherlands,

Kevin Whitelaw: Why the CIA uses so many contractors

News that the CIA worked with a private contractor on a secret assassination program is the latest evidence of how much the agency has outsourced a range of its activities, including covert missions. According to The New York Times, the CIA in 2004 worked briefly with Blackwater, the controversial private security firm, on a program designed to target and kill al-Qaida operatives. The program was scrapped before any missions were launched. But it reflects a prac

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater: CIA Assassins?

[Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!.] In April 2002, the CIA paid Blackwater more than $5 million to deploy a small team of men inside Afghanistan during the early stages of US operations in the countr