Roundup: Media's Take

Lawrence O'Donnell Jr.: The Stupidity of the Gates Arrest

[Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. is an MSNBC political analyst and the author of Deadly Force: The True Story of How a Badge Can Become a License to Kill. ] Here is what the absurdist, typically stilted language of Sergeant James Crowley's report on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. really means: Gates: You're not the boss of me! Crowley: I am the boss of you. Gates: You are not the boss of me! Crowley: I'll show you. You're under arrest.

Dick Morris: Obama's Dwindling Power

Superficially, the United States appears to have a presidential system, but in fact it more and more resembles a parliamentary form of government. When a president loses the approval of the majority of the voters and polls reflect that his ratings have fallen substantially below 50 percent, he loses his power. In this context, polls are like parliamentary votes of no confidence in European systems. While the government does not fall if it loses in the polling, it limps on until either its rating

Charlayne Hunter-Gault: Skip Gates’ arrest reminds me of the violent days of the civil rights movement.

I was lying in my hospital bed in Boston when I got an e-mail from someone making an oblique reference to the arrest of Skip Gates. I thought the writer was mistaken and wrote back saying, “But Skip is in China.” I couldn’t believe there was anything under the sun that would lead to Skip getting arrested—unless it was in China. And even then, what could he have done? Asked an official a tough question about human rights or something? So I did what I always do when I need to reach Sk

Peter Bergen: Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam

[Peter Bergen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a frequent visitor to Afghanistan since 1993.] Throughout his campaign last year, President Barack Obama said repeatedly that the real central front of the war against terrorists was on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And now he is living up to his campaign promise to roll back the Taliban and al-Qaeda with significant resources. By the end of the year there will be some 70,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan, and

Brent Staples: President Obama, Professor Gates and the Cambridge Police

The American obsession with people who are said to transcend race began long before Barack Obama moved into the White House — long before he even thought about running for president. Affluent, well-educated black people were being appropriated as symbols of racial progress — and held up as proof that racism no longer mattered — back when Mr. Obama was still a youth in short pants White Americans have little experience with this brand of appropriation. In general, their personal and

James Joyner: Bush’s Third Term

[James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council.] President Obama took the oath of office six months ago. He did so after a long campaign in which he continuously promised “change” and to “restore America’s standing in the world.” Thus far, however, optics are all that keeps his administration’s foreign policy from being a continuation of George W. Bush’s. In fairness, six months is not much time. Then again, it represents one eighth of the term. Further, as Ob

Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith: Lessons From Hard Times Past

We're all struggling with how to think - and what to do - in the face of the "great recession." An initial progressive response was to advocate better regulation; then Keynesian economic stimulus; now nationalization; perhaps in the future some kind of socialism. One theme that has reverberated through periods of "hard times" in the past is the idea of "production for use." It has appeared in the form of public works job creation; worker-run enter

William Greider: Dismantling the Temple

[National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and, most recently, Come Home, America.] The financial crisis has propelled the Federal Reserve into an excruciating political dilemma. The Fed is at the zeni

Amy Goodman: The 21st Century Color Line

[Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. ] W.E.B. Du Bois' classic 1903 work "The Souls of Black Folk" opens with "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." Du Bois helped form the NAACP, the

Amy Goodman: The 21st Century Color Line

[Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. ] W.E.B. Du Bois' classic 1903 work "The Souls of Black Folk" opens with "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." Du Bois helped form the NAACP, the

David Burge: A Wise Latina Will Add Spice to the Menudo of Justice

Iowahawk Guest Commentary by Judge Sonia Sotamayor Nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court There has been a great deal written in recent weeks about an old extemporaneous quote of mine in which I stated that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." One needn't read the prophetic entrails of my culture's colorful Santeria chicken sac

Chris Hildebrand: Don't Forget the Balkans, Again

[Chris Hildebrand writes for Diplomatic Courier.] Noticeably absent from President Obama’s recent jaunt through Europe is any update or attention on the Balkan nations of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and the fledgling state of Kosovo. This absence is not surprising. The Balkan states, scene to a brutal civil war in the 1990’s, have remained seemingly hidden from international media of late, bar a few exceptions. Now, 14 years after the massacre at Srebrenica, it is time

David Bromwich: How Serial War Became the American Way of Life

[David Bromwich, the editor of a selection of Edmund Burke's speeches, On Empire, Liberty, and Reform, has written on the Constitution and America's wars for The New York Review of Books and The Huffington Post.] On July 16, in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gat

George Jonas: Assassination: A Brief History

[George Jonas is author of Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, which was adapted for the film Munich.] Opponents couldn't make political hay out of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's withholding (if he did) from congressional scrutiny secret CIA programs to assassinate high-ranking al Qaeda operatives, if people had no qualms about targeted killing. But they do. Governments can bomb faceless troops of enemy conscripts with impunity, but are question

Bret Stephens: Apollo Mission Demonstrated Strength and Fearlessness of American Character

[Bret Stephens is the foreign-affairs columnist of the Wall Street Journal and a member of the paper's editorial board.] It’s a safe bet that 100 years from now most half-way educated people will know about Neil Armstrong. It’s also a safe bet that in a century the name Michael Jackson will be familiar only to five or six cultural anthropologists and, possibly, a medical historian. So what does it say about the United States in 2009 that the late moon-walker is a household name but

David Kilcullen: For answers to the Afghan-Pakistan conflict, ask ... what would Curzon do?

[Dr David Kilcullen, author of The Accidental Guerrilla (Hurst/Oxford 2009), served in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2006 and 2008 as Special Adviser for Counterinsurgency to the US Secretary of State.] Britain’s eyes this week are on southern Afghanistan. US Marines have doubled Coalition troop numbers in Helmand and are moving to clear Taleban base areas as part of Operation Khanjar. A major British offensive is also underway: Operation Panchai Palang, an effort to extend Coalition

Robert Creamer: Memo to Members of Congress: Don't Be on the Wrong Side of History

[Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on amazon.com.] more details at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer Today it would be hard to find one member of Congress who openly advocates the abolition of Medicare or Social Security. It's true that during the Bush Presidency, right-wing Republicans

By Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie: What's Next, Mr. President -- Cardigans?

[Nick Gillespie is the editor of Reason.com and Reason.tv. Matt Welch is editor of Reason magazine. They will discuss this article online at 11 a.m. on Monday at www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.] Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from

Steve Benen: Dems need to remember Republican strategy on health care in 1993 was to break the party's momentum

In 1993, Bill Kristol privately advised congressional Republicans to do whatever it took to "kill" the Clinton health care reform initiative. It wasn't that the policy proposal was a bad idea; it was that passage would help the Democratic Party for years to come. The GOP, he said, for the sake of its own future, couldn't compromise or negotiate with the majority. Sixteen years later, a wide variety of Democrats are working hard to convince Republicans to support reform, de

Adam Holland: Fascist follies in the European Parliament

[Mr. Holland runs an investigative blog.] Csanád Szegedi (pictured at right), one of three newly elected Hungarian members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the fascist Jobbik party, came to the parliament's July 14 opening session wearing the uniform of the party's illegal Magyar Garda militia. (Read here, and