Roundup: Media's Take

Alex Koppelman: Why the stories about Obama's birth certificate will never die

Barack Obama can't be president: He wasn't really born in Hawaii, and the certification of live birth his campaign released is a forgery. He was born in Kenya. Or maybe Indonesia. Or, wait, maybe he was born in Hawaii -- but that doesn't matter, since he was also a British citizen at birth because of his father, and you can't be a "natural-born citizen" in that case. (But then, maybe his "father" wasn't really his father; maybe his real dad was an obscure communist poet. Or M

Andrew Anthony: Our cruelty to Obama's family is no excuse for fresh tyranny

[Andrew Anthony has been writing for the Observer since 1993 and for the Guardian since 1990.] Last week, it was revealed that Barack Obama's paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned and tortured by the British authorities in Kenya during colonial rule in the late Forties and early Fifties. According to his third wife, whom the President-elect calls 'Granny Sarah', the experience left Hussein Onyango with a lifelong bitterness towards Britain. And not

Richard Larsen: Troublesome issues from past election

[Richard Larsen of Pocatello is president of the brokerage firm Larsen Financial. He graduated from Idaho State University with degrees in political science and history.] After a month of pondering the outcome of the recent election, I’m still troubled by certain aspects of the presidential campaign. Yes, I was disappointed with the outcome, but unlike the intolerant bigots in California who continue to harass, intimidate, and terrorize supporters of Proposition 8, I accept the resu

David Barber: Both Lincoln and Obama dabbled in poetry as young adults. Herewith, a consideration of a poem by Lincoln that appeared in The Atlantic.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Mark Twain's mordant epigram seems to ring truer than ever in these trying times, and not just because the gory meltdown on Wall Street has gotten everyone talking as if the Great Depression might turn out to be déjà vu all over again. Consider the more uplifting phenomenon of our preternaturally unflappable president-elect appealing to the better angels of our natures by invoking the aura of Abraham Lincoln early and often. Asked in his firs

David Horowitz: Obama Derangement Syndrome ... Conservatives Need to Shut Up About the Birth Certificate

The continuing efforts of a fringe group of conservatives to deny Obama his victory and to lay the basis for the claim that he is not a legitimate president is embarrassing and destructive. The fact that these efforts are being led by Alan Keyes, an unhinged demagogue on the political fringe who lost a senate election to the then unknown Obama by 42 points should be a warning in itself. This tempest over whether Obama, the child of an American citizen, was born on American soil is t

Christopher Beam: Saying America is "center-right" isn't just wrong. It's meaningless.

Since the election, conservatives have consoled themselves with the idea that Obama may have won, but America is still a "center-right nation." But the phrase is tossed around with little evidence—possibly because there is none. Even if there were evidence, the term is so muddled as to be meaningless. Defenders of the center-right maxim usually cite the statistic that more Americans identify themselves as conservative (38 percent, according to the most recent study by the

Douglas R. Burgess Jr.: Piracy Is Terrorism

[Douglas R. Burgess Jr. is the author of “The Pirates’ Pact: The Secret Alliances Between History’s Most Notorious Buccaneers and Colonial America.”] THE golden age of piracy has returned. Just as Henry Every and William Kidd once made their fortunes in the Red Sea, a new generation has emerged, armed with grenade launchers and assault rifles, to threaten trade and distract the world’s navies. With the recent capture of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star, a crime that once seemed rem

Daniel Henninger: 'Traits of the frontier' still shape America, even if the left doesn't like it

The greatest danger in the current economic crisis is that the United States will lose its historic appetite for risk. The mood now is that risk-taking got us into this mess. Risk, though, is the quintessential American trait that built the nation -- from the Battle of Bunker Hill to the rise of the microchip. If we let risk give way to a new ethos of commercial reserve and regulatory restriction, the upward arc of the U.S. ascendancy will flatten. Maybe it already has. By "we&

Michael Barone: The Future of Conservatism

The following roundtable discussion about the direction of the conservative movement took place on Saturday, November 15, during the 2008 Restoration Weekend, the annual event hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. -- The Editors. Larry Greenfield: Good morning. Welcome to our Panel on the Future of American conservatism. The Democratic Party has a game plan, an educational system that bullies conservatives and indoctrinates students to liberalism; media bias to paint conserva

George F. Will: Obama's Jobs Lowball

Three days after the president-elect announced in a radio address that he had directed his "economic team" to devise a plan "that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011," he said at a news conference that he favored measures "that will help save or create 2.5 million jobs." To the extent that his ambition is clear, it is notably modest. It is, however, unclear. How will anyone calculate the number of jobs "saved"? In what sense sav

Anand Gopal: Who Are the Taliban?

[Anand Gopal writes frequently about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the "War on Terror." He is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor based in Afghanistan. For more of his information and dispatches from the region, visit his website. ] If there is an exact location marking the West's failures in Afghanistan, it is the modest police checkpoint that sits on the main highway 20 minutes south of Kabul. The post signals the

Priyamvada Gopal: Comparing Mumbai to 9/11 diminishes both tragedies

[Priyamvada Gopal teaches postcolonial studies at Cambridge University.] Every brutal massacre of defenceless innocents must draw from us a kindred horror, whether it is Hiroshima 1945, Deir Yassin 1948, Sharpeville 1960, Halabja 1988, New York 2001, Gujarat 2002, or Haditha 2005. But each also bears the imprints of its place and time and we must commemorate them accordingly. The now familiar refrain describing last week's attacks in Mumbai as "India's 9/11" d

Nicolaus Mills: What BHO can learn from FDR

[Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of the forthcoming book, Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America's Coming of Age as a Superpower.] As the financial crisis worsens, Barack Obama has been drawn into increased cooperation with the Bush administration. It is an important step for him to take, but if he allows the history of Franklin Roosevelt's transition to power in 1932 to be his guide, Obama will move cautiously in the

Robert D. Kaplan: Behind Mumbai

[Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.] ... India is home to 154 million Muslims, the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. Tolerable inter-communal relations are the sine qua non of Indian stability and ascendancy. India has more to lose from extremist Islam than arguably any other country in the world. The Mumbai terrorists announced themselves as the Deccan

Michael Parenti: Afghanistan, Another Untold Story

[Michael Parenti’s recent books are Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader and the forthcoming God and His Demons. For further information, visit www.michaelparenti.org.] Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghan history and the role played by the United States. Less than a month afte

Deepak Tripathi: On Obama’s Foreign Crises

[Deepak Tripathi, former BBC journalist, is a researcher and an author. His works can be found on http://deepaktripathi.wordpress.com and he can be reached at DandATripathi@gmail.com.] The carnage in Mumbai by young, well trained gunmen is the latest chapter in the world’s most complex web of problems today. Not only is it bound to have new consequences, it also throws up fresh challeng

Brian Ladd: How the Big Three's lost clout in Washington may actually help the auto industry.

Who says America's Big Three automakers are lumbering, bureaucratic relics incapable of reading the public mood? Just last month, their CEOs traveled to Washington on their corporate jets. (At least partly because of that decision, they returned home with no federal largesse and hardly any public sympathy.) For this week's visit, at least two of the CEOs plan to drive—and the third, Chrysler's Robert Nardelli, says he won't be taking a private jet. Still, it's unlikely the Big Three

Jerry Bower: Who decided that the National Bureau of Economic Research decides when we're in a recession? Nobody.

[Mr. Bowyer is chief economist of BenchMark Financial Network and a CNBC contributor.] Who died and made the National Bureau of Economic Research boss? During the past two days my in-box has been flooded by NEWS ALERT: RECESSION OFFICIALLY STARTED IN 2007 or some simulacra thereof. So who made the NBER the Supreme Court of recession calls? I asked them. The answer was not really confidence inspiring. According to their press office, once upon a time the Department of Co

Jay Parini: Warren Buffett and the American Dream

[Jay Parini is a novelist, poet, and professor of English at Middlebury College. His latest book, Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America, was published by Doubleday last month.] Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, is a modern business legend. In addition to being one of the richest men in America (even with recent losses, he is still worth tens of billions), he's an investment guru whose conversational asides can roil, or arouse, global markets. He is also something of

Greg Sargent: Big News Orgs Help Bush Whitewash History Of Iraq War

This really isn't complicated. President Bush was not being"blunt" or showing" candor" when he told ABC News in an interview published yesterday that his biggest regret was the failure of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. Rather, he was whitewashing away his own role in the fisaco by promoting the demonstrable falsehood that there was no available evidence or infor