Roundup: Media's Take

Nicolai N. Petro: One Year After the Russo-Georgian War

[Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. He has served as special assistant for policy in the U.S. State Department, and as civic affairs advisor to the mayor of the Russian city of Novgorod the Great.] Response to questions posed by Irina Sivkova of Russia's state owned RIA Novosti News Agency (RIAN). 1. What in your opinion sparked the conflict in the Caucasus last year? While the conflict has it origins in th

Seth Sandronsky: Rethinking US Penal Policy

The proportion of US citizens behind bars far exceeds that of every other nation on Earth. Further, there is a class and race dimension to US incarceration: blacks and Latinos are imprisoned at a much higher rate than are whites. The total incarceration rate per 100,000 individuals, including federal and state imprisonment and local jail detention, is: 820 for whites, 5,126 for blacks, and 1,907 for Hispanics. Latinos represent the fastest-growing segment of the minority prison pop

Mark Hosenball: I Was At Woodstock. And I Hated It.

[Hosenball is an investigative correspondent for NEWSWEEK who covers national affairs.] Stop being nostalgic for the 40-year-old concert. It was wet, crowded, and overhyped. Woodstock wasn't the only thing that happened in the world in August 1969 If it's toxic to overdose on saccharine, then over the next few days, you should try to avoid the gathering deluge of reminiscence about Woodstock. It's the 40th anniversary of the upstate New York rock-and-roll e

Charles Lane: Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson

[Charles Lane in an opinion writer for The Washington Post] On Wednesday, President Obama will drape the Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of former Irish president Mary Robinson. The White House says Robinson deserves it because she was the first female president of Ireland and is a “prominent crusader for women’s rights.” I think honoring Robinson will dilute an already somewhat overextended award. I agree with those who say Robinson showed a prosecutorial

Walter E. Williams: Politics and Blacks

[Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Media Research Center's Free Market Project.] President Barack Obama won an unprecedented 96 percent of the black vote. That’s not much of a news story since blacks typically give their votes to the Democratic candidate. Blacks are probably the most politically loyal people in the nation and it is almost taken as gospel, at least amon

Jason Trenner: Remembering the Reagan Bull Market

[Mr. Trennert is a managing partner with Strategas Research Partners.] For economic historians and defenders of the Reagan revolution, this week will forever be seen as the anniversary of one of the greatest bull markets in history. It was on Aug. 12, 1982, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped to its 1980-82 recession low of 776.92—almost precisely where the Index had closed in January 1964. Starting as a trickle, the decline in inflation and long-term interes

Carlin Romano: The Shame of Academe and Fascism, Then and Now

[Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review and literary critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.] How should America's university presidents respond to the savagery in Iran today? The incarcerated student protesters forced to lick toilet bowls. The imprisoned dissidents beaten to death in holding pens, some with their fingernails torn out. The many murdered protesters, includin

Adam Cohen: A Century-Old Principle: Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections

The founders were wary of corporate influence on politics — and their rhetoric sometimes got pretty heated. In an 1816 letter, Thomas Jefferson declared his hope to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” This skepticism was enshrined in law in the early 20th century when the nation adopted strict rules banning corporations from contributing to

Simon Tisdall: Gaddafi's remarkable rehabilitation

[Simon Tisdall is an assistant editor of the Guardian and a foreign affairs columnist.] The return to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber would mark another stage in the remarkable rehabilitation of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and a regime formerly shunned by Britain and other western countries as a dangerous pariah. But relations with Tripoli remain tentative in other respects, with issues such as the 1984 murder outside the Libyan embassy in London of PC Yvonne Fletcher still unresolved.

Bill Emmott: The recovery will prove Thatcherism right

[Bill Emmott was editor of The Economist, 1993-2006 and is the author of Rivals: How the Power Struggle between China, India and Japan Will Shape our Next Decade.] All around the world, economies seem to be turning a corner, moving out of a period of this global recession in which the good news was just that things were getting bad more slowly into one in which things are actually getting better. Exports are picking up, order books are getting fatter, production is starting to rise

Vince Bzdek: The Faces of a 'Royal' Generation Fade Into History

[Vince Bzdek is a Washington Post Staff Writer.] Three days before John F. Kennedy won his first campaign, the 1946 Democratic primary in Boston's 8th District, the enormous Kennedy family threw an enormous party. Eunice, the middlest of the middle children, was the driving force behind the idea: a huge formal reception at the Commodore Hotel in Cambridge, with engraved invitations sent to female voters, plans for ballroom dancing, and tuxedos required. The party was t

James Kirchick: Did Obama vet Mary Robinson before choosing her for the Medal of Freedom?

[James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic.] Today, Barack Obama will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 16 recipients. What should be a joyous affair, however, has been the subject of growing controversy due to the selection of Mary Robinson--a former United Nations official who presided over the notoriously anti-Zionist 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. For this, Obama has earned himself much criticism from the American Jewish co

Edward Luttwak: Why U.S. Diplomacy Will Fail With Iran

[Edward Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of the forthcoming "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" (Harvard).] Long before his inauguration, Barack Obama lucidly explained how he would deal with Iran. During the campaign he said he would "engage" its leaders by offering talks without preconditions—without even asking them to stop chanting "death to America" when concluding their speec

Thomas F. Cooley: The Rocky History Of Fed Independence

[Thomas F. Cooley, the Paganelli-Bull professor of economics and Richard R. West dean of the NYU Stern School of Business, writes a weekly column for Forbes. He is a contributor to a new book on the financial crisis entitled Restoring Financial Stability (Wiley, 2009).] My fellow columnist John Tamny wrote an excellent column last week arguing that the notion of an independent Fed is a myth. I come to a different conclusion than he does about the evidence and the implications. But o

Jefferson Flanders: Birthers, Truthers, and Buffs: The Paranoid Style

[Jefferson Flanders, an independent journalist, has taught at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. He blogs at Neither Red Nor Blue. ] The tone and tactics of the Birther movement—those who dispute Barack Obama’s American citizenship and consequently, his legitimacy as America’s 44th president—are eerily familiar. Birthers embody that mixture of “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” that historian Richard Hofstadter indeli

Paul Krugman: Averting the Worst

So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government. Just to be clear: the economic situation remains terrible, indeed worse than almost anyone thought possible not long ago. The nation has lost 6.7 million jobs since the recession began. Once you take into account the need to find employment for a growing working-age population, we’re probably around nine million jobs short of where we should be.

John Bolton: Contesting Mary Robinson's Medal of Freedom

[Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).] Barack Obama’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson has generated unexpected but emotionally charged opposition. Appointed by then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as high commissioner for human rights in 1997-2002, Ms. Robinson had a controversial but ineffective tenu

Robert J. Samuelson: Can We Afford Obama's Health-Care Plan?

"The status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government." —President Obama, June 13 One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While deno

Hussein Agha, Robert Malley: The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything

[Hussein Agha is a co-author, with Ahmed S. Khalidi, of “A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine.” Robert Malley, the director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group, was a special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001.] The two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, have indicated

David R. Stokes: Rules For Witnesses

[David R. Stokes (www.davidrstokes.com) is a minister, broadcaster, and free-lance writer. He currently serves as Senior Pastor of FAIR OAKS CHURCH in Fairfax, Virginia] There is a scene early on in the movie Patton, where the feisty general watches the forces under his command do battle with those led by the legendary German Panzer leader, Erwin Rommel. To prepare for this particular skirmish, “Old Blood and Guts” studied the writings of his adversary, prompting the memorable li