Roundup: Media's Take

Johann Hari : The Strange, Strange Story of the Gay Fascists

[Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. ] The news that Jorg Haider - the Austrian fascist leader - spent his final few hours in a gay bar with a hot blond has shocked some people. It hasn't shocked me. This is a taboo topic for a gay left-wing man like me to touch, but there has always been a weird, disproportionate overlap between homosexuality and fascism. Take a deep breath; here goes. Some 10,000 gay people were slaughtered in the Nazi death-camps.

Timothy P. O'Neill: Enough Ivy League judges on top court

[Timothy P. O'Neill, a professor at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, has written and lectured widely on criminal law and criminal procedure. Among his articles was a 2007 piece for the Oklahoma Law Review: "The Stepford Justices: The Need for Experiential Diversity on the Roberts Court." He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Michigan Law School.] ... Many commentators have noted that this is the first Supreme Court in American histo

Anatole Kaletsky: America will still rule the post-crisis world

[Anatole Kaletsky writes for The Times Comment pages on Thursdays.] I am just back from Washington where the green shoots of recovery have sprouted into a jungle on Wall Street, if not yet on main street or in other countries. I was addressing a meeting of US and European diplomats to survey the geopolitical horizons. As the world economy gradually returns to something approaching normality after the catastrophe triggered by the Lehmans bankruptcy on September 15 last

Deepak Tripathi: On Obama’s Pakistan Test

[Deepak Tripathi, former BBC journalist, is a researcher and an author with particular reference to South and West Asia and US policy. His forthcoming book, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, will be published by Potomac Books in November 2009. His works can be found on http://deepaktripathilibrary.wordpress.com and he can be reached at: DandATripathi@gmail.com.] R

Fatima Bhutto: Obama's Murderous Guest

[Ms. Bhutto is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, an elected member of parliament, who was assassinated in 1996.] Besides ruining my country, I believe my aunt's husband, Pakistani President Zardari, orchestrated my father’s murder. Is Obama really going to offer him billions more when they meet today? Something rotten has arrived in Washington. Today, President Barack Obama will shake hands and stage Oval Office photo ops for the first time with the man who m

David Harsanyi: Sorry, history just ain't that easy

[David Harsanyi is an award-winning columnist and an editorial board member at The Denver Post.] It's fun to be idealistic in a world of moral absolutes. I know, I'm a columnist. But when we start discussing history, things always seem to get complicated. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show"learned this recently when debating the Foundation for Defense of Democracies president Cliff May about the harsh interrogation techniques administered during the Bush administ

Media Matters: Media myths and falsehoods about the Supreme Court

With Supreme Court Justice David Souter's recently announced retirement, Media Matters for America presents the

Christopher Hitchens: Why Obama cited Churchill on torture

[Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.] He didn't get the attention he deserved for it, but President Obama was very cleverly fusing liberal principles with an appeal to the basic conservative values of"Old Europe" when, in his 100th-day press conference, he used Winston Churchill to justify his opposition to water-boarding and other"enhanced methods." He told his audience that, even at a

Peter Bergen: Afghan leader holding strong cards

[Peter Bergen is the author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader.] There will be much to discuss -- principally, of course, how to reverse the rising tide of Talibanization on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border, which is a key foreign policy challenge for the Obama administration. But how long will Obama and Zardari have to deal with Karzai whose five-year presidential term expires this month and who is now up for election on A

Robert Mackey: Pakistan’s British-Drawn Borders

In their fascinating account of a series of interviews with a Taliban tactician in Tuesday’s New York Times, Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah point to “one distinct Taliban advantage: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan barely exists for the Taliban.” In previous posts on The Lede, we’ve mentioned that Pakistan and the rest of the world believes that Afghanistan ends (and Pakistan begins) more or less where a 1,600-mile line was drawn on the world map in 1893, at the directio

Kate Phillips: A Post-Script on Churchill, Obama and Torture

Given that the definitions and practices of brutal interrogation methods, past and present, remain part of our modern-day debate, it seems worthwhile to revisit the remarks President Obama made during his “100 Days” news conference about Winston Churchill’s views on torture and gather some of the discussion that has ensued since then. To recap, journalists and bloggers spent the days after Mr. Obama’s news conference dissecting his remarks, and countering them with evidence uncovere

Aleksander Kwasniewski: No More Berlin Walls

[Mr. Kwasniewski was president of Poland from 1995 to 2005.] It will be 20 years later this month since President George H.W. Bush delivered his historic call for a "Europe whole and free" in Mainz, West Germany. The context in which he spoke was one of optimism and change made possible by Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Four days later, Poland held its first competitive, multiparty elections in more than half a century. By the end of the year the Berlin Wall lay in ruins and

Gideon Rachman: Obama's 'apologies' are a strength

[Gideon Rachman became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006.] “I will never apologise for the United States, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” President George H.W. Bush’s statement in 1988 was more than just a “Bushism”, of the sort that his son later made famous. It was also a pithy summary of a whole school of thought in the US. For many conservative Americans, one of the besetting sins of their liberal rivals is a tendency to go

David Shribman: Presidents Don't Prosecute Their Predecessors

[David Shribman is The Boston Globe's Washington bureau chief, assisting managing editor, and columnist.] When Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams, a contest that put America on such a different footing that it is remembered today as the Revolution of 1800, he did not seek to put members of the Adams administration on trial. When Warren G. Harding followed Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1921, he did not put Edith Galt Wilson on trial for usurping the office of the presidency

Rodger Citron: The Supreme Court Considers a Powerful Challenge to the Voting Rights Act

[Rodger Citron is an Assistant Professor of Law at Touro Law Center on Long Island and a FindLaw guest columnist.] Today, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder ("NAMUDNO"), arguably the Court's most important – and perhaps most difficult – case of the term. NAMUDNO involves a powerful challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act ("the Act") and implicates fundamental constitutional principles,

Amy Goodman: Disclosure of ‘Secrets’ in the '70s Didn’t Destroy the Nation

President Barack Obama promised "more transparent ... more creative" government. His release of the torture memos, and the Pentagon's expected release of more photos of detainee abuse, is a step in the right direction. Yet he assured the CIA that he will not prosecute those who followed the instructions to torture from the Bush administration. Congress might not agree with this leniency, with prominent senators calling for investigations. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ch

Alan Abramowitz: The Obama Generation ... Celebrity Worshippers or Responsible Citizens?

[Dr. Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and the author of Voice of the People: Elections and Voting Behavior in the United States (2004, McGraw-Hill). He can be contacted via email at polsaa@emory.edu.] Americans under the age of 30 played a major role in the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. According to the 2008 national exit poll, 18-29 year-olds made

Toby Harnden: Barack Obama aglow after 100-day honeymoon - just like Carter

[Toby Harnden is the Telegraph's Washington correspondent.] White House aides have airily dismissed the milestone of President Barack Obama's first 100 days as a "Hallmark holiday", an artificial conceit dreamt up by journalists too lazy to focus on the substance of policy. Yet, in reality, the new administration has prepared for today's century of Obama days with an intensity that goes beyond the inevitable media fixation with what has been an early gauge of

Ken Walsh: LBJ's Hundred Days

... Lyndon B. Johnson had a specific objective in mind that guided his presidency from the start—to out-do Franklin D. Roosevelt as the champion of everyday Americans. LBJ got off to a fast start, but the very traits that made his presidency so promising in the beginning—his big ideas and ability to bend Congress to his will—proved to be the seeds of his political destruction. "Throughout his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson consistently measured his record against that of his pol

Scott Rasmussen: Barack Obama’s First 100 Days ... Will They Lead to Lasting Change?

[Mr. Rasmussen runs Rasmussen Reports, a polling company.] As Barack Obama’s administration reaches the 100-day mark, partisans and ideologues on both sides are spinning furiously to define what has happened so far and what it means going forward. Republicans and conservatives try to paint a portrait of declining support and weakness. Democrats and liberals see a president with unrivaled popularity and power. Both assessments are wrong. As the president con