Roundup: Media's Take

Marc A. Thiessen: The CIA's Questioning Worked

[Marc A. Thiessen, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in senior positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009, most recently as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.] In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists "did not make us safer." This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public -- i

Jeffrey A. Lockwood: So should we be surprised by the news that the C.I.A. considered using insects to instill fear in Abu Zubaydah? Yes.

[Jeffrey A. Lockwood, a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming, is the author of “Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War.”] ... The ancient Persians developed a gruesome practice called scaphism, which involved force-feeding a person milk and honey, lashing him to a boat or hollow tree trunk, and then allowing flies to infest the victim’s anus and increasingly gangrenous flesh. Siberian tribes simply tied a naked prisoner to a tree an

Bob Jeffrey: Millennials' New Mantra: Have Less, Imagine More

[Bob Jeffrey, JWT Chairman and CEO, relaunched the fourth largest advertising agency in the world as a “billion-dollar startup” in February 2005.] The Millennials, who were supposed to be the harbingers of a global interwebbed knowledge-based prosperity, are now inheritors of one of the greatest collapses of collective judgment this century has seen. Are they in denial, in disappointment or simply in disbelief? Some recent research we've conducted at JWT, part of our

Robert J. Samuelson: Almost all the errors of the 1930s were rooted in the economic orthodoxies of the time. Could the same be true today?

[Samuelson began his journalism career in 1969 as a reporter for the Post. He left the Post in 1973 and was a freelance writer for almost four years before joining the National Journal magazine as its economics correspondent in late 1976.] The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most momentous economic event of the 20th century. It was a proximate cause of World War II, having fed the Nazis' rise in Germany. It inspired a new American welfare system as a response to mass misery. E

William Fisher: Clinton, Agnew, Nixon Redux (Re: torture memos)

[William Fisher spent more than thirty years managing economic development programs for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development. He has served in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa. Fisher started his career as a journalist with Florida newspapers and the Associated Press. He served in the international affairs area during the Kennedy Administration.] Lawyers who reject President Barack Obama's decision not to seek prosecution of official

Michael Bohm: The New Kremlin Dreamers

[Michael Bohm is the opinion page editor of The Moscow Times.] Several weeks ago in Voronezh, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said the ambitious goals for "Strategy 2020" remain in place despite the economic crisis. He also said Russia has every chance of becoming the world's most desirable place to live by 2020. "This is no fairy tale," Shuvalov added, but if you examine the strategy closely, it certainly looks like one. Consider the four

William J. Astore: Mary McCarthy in Vietnam, Barack Obama in Afghanistan

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. A TomDispatch regular, he currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.] In 1967, outraged by the course of the Vietnam War, as well as her country's role in prolonging and worsening it,

Farnaz Calafi, Ali Dadpay, Pouyan Mashayekh: The American Iranians lionize

[Farnaz Calafi is a writer. Ali Dadpay writes the blog Bazaar Dispatch. Pouyan Mashayekh writes the Persian-language blog Khakriz Eghtesad.] FEW Americans have heard of Howard Conklin Baskerville, but most Iranians know his name. A native of Nebraska, Baskerville graduated from the Princeton Theological Seminary and moved to Iran as a Presbyterian missionary. He was 23. The year was 1907. Baskerville was an idealist at a time of idealism in Iran. The year before Baskerv

George Jonas: A trip down Jimmy Carter's memory lane

[George Jonas writes for the National Post.] 'If politicians lied all the time, you could figure them out. But you can't rely on it," I remember my father saying to me. "Sometimes they blindside you by telling the truth." I should have listened to him. Canadians don't vote in American elections; they only suffer the consequences. Still, had I suspected that Barack Obama is telling the truth, I wouldn't have been so nonchalant about the Rev.

David Swindle: The Return of the Reparations Monster

[David Swindle is a free lance writer, film critic, and blogger. He is currently working on a book on the ideas of David Horowitz, the research for which can be read and contributed to at his blog Books In Depth. He can be contacted at DavidSwindle@gmail.com.] The ideas of the Left are a bit like the villains in horror movies. Just when world events should signal their obvious defeat they somehow manage to rise again. The fall of the Sovi

Andrew Walden: 9/11 Truthers Meet the Birth Certificate Brigade

“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.” – Saul Alinsky For years, the "9/11 Truth" movement -- which claimed George W. Bush knew about, or even perpetrated, the 9/11 attack -- enjoyed a friendly home in the far-Left's netroots. As the netroots consolidated their grip on the Democratic Party, "troothers"were left behind. Now, many of the same personalities are behind a movement demanding to see Barack Obama's birth cert

David R. Stokes: Know your enemy

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.] In the aftermath of the horrific events of September 11, 2001, our government, in its infinite wisdom, formed a new entity. It would be an agency designed to protect us all – The Department of Homeland Security. I happen to know many wonderful people who work under its aegis, and I think it by and large serves a necessary purpose in these perilous times. But in the wrong hands, even good things can become bad.

Ben Macintyre: Piracy's Roots Go Deep In Somalia's History

[Ben Macintyre is Writer at Large for The Times and contributes a regular Friday column.] We call them “pirates”, because that is how they most easily translate into Western culture, but the Somali marauders currently terrorising Indian Ocean shipping might better be termed ocean-going shiftas, heirs to a long and uniquely African tradition of banditry. The term shifta may be unfamiliar, yet it is a key to understanding what is happening off the coast of Somalia, and h

Robert Borosage: The faux tax rebellion

[Borosage is Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future.] Tax Day. Fox News is flogging Astroturf"tea parties" underwritten by corporate lobbyists, while its pundits warn that raising the top income tax rate to the level it was under Bill Clinton constitutes"socialism." The Wall Street Journal editorializes about the evils of the estate tax. Ari Fleischer, Daddy Bush's old flack, is trotted out to complain

Jack Shafer: The Great Newspaper Crackup of 1918 And what to learn from it.

[ Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large. ] Gravediggers earned overtime during the second decade of the last century as they shoveled earth over such expired newspapers as the Boston Journal, the Cleveland Leader, the New York Press, and the Boston Traveler. They were kept busy in Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Portland, Ore., too, where newspapers either went under or consolidated with stronger competitors. In his much remarked-on obituary for the

Todd Crowell: Thailand ... Spanish Civil War Redux?

[Todd Crowell worked for Thailand-based Asia Times from 2006-07. He currently writes from Tokyo.] Bangkok circa 2009 is looking more and more like Madrid circa 1936. That was the year that the bloody Spanish Civil War began, which lasted until 1939 and killed hundreds of thousands. Could such a bloody event engulf the Land of Smiles? The government headed by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, which took office after the judges disenfranchised enough members of parliament

Damon Linker: Is The Christian Right Finally Starting To Realize The Tension Between Religion And Politics?

The ordinary resources of empirical observation and ordinary human knowledge give us no warrant for supposing that all good things are reconcilable with each other. --Isaiah Berlin This quote -- a long-time favorite of mine -- came to mind when I heard that James Dobson had conceded the religious right's defeat in the culture war. Let's assume for a moment that the right has indeed been routed (which I doubt). Dobson and his admirers and allies no doubt view the event as a te

Alan Wolfe: From Adam Smith To Keynes To Obama--Liberalism Has Always Had The Same Foundations

On a recent trip to the Twin Cities to give a lecture, I was invited to write something by the editors of Contexts, a snappy journal associated with the American Sociological Association designed to bring sociological knowledge to the informed reading public. The magazine runs a feature called "One Thing I Know." Tell us one thing you know, the editors asked. Accepting their invitation, the one thing I claimed to know is that there is no such thing as a distinction betwee

Michael Lind: America is not a Christian nation

Is America a Christian nation, as many conservatives claim it is? One American doesn't think so. In his press conference on April 6 in Turkey, President Obama explained: "One of the great strengths of the United States is … we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." Predictably, Obama's remarks hav

WSJ Editorial: Presto ... Another $750 Billion

The U.S. and Europe were widely expected to clash at the G-20 summit in London last month over how to address the global financial crisis. Voila, in just two days the problem was solved with a joint promise to increase International Monetary Fund resources by $750 billion to a total of $1 trillion. The U.S. portion of this new commitment is more than $140 billion. Yet Congress has debated neither the amount nor the proposed use of the funds. Instead, President Obama and his fellow l