Roundup: Media's Take

Ivan Eland: Military Action May Sometimes Be Moral and Constitutional, But Not Smart

[Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. ] President-elect Barack Obama—showing the obligatory toughness toward foreign “evildoers” needed (especially by Democrats) in American political campaigns—pledged to use the American military to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan. Of all people, his hawkish rival, Senator John McCain, who supported the unprovoked U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, criticized Obama’s approach t

Michael Lind: Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive?

If the conservative era is over, can liberals come out of their defensive crouch and call themselves liberals again, instead of progressives? In the last two decades, Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama, have abandoned the term "liberal" for "progressive." The theory was that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush -- and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan -- had succeeded in equating "liberal" in the public mind with weakne

Bret Stephens: Why Don't We Hang Pirates Anymore?

... Year-to-date, Somalia-based pirates have attacked more than 90 ships, seized more than 35, and currently hold 17. Some 280 crew members are being held hostage, and two have been killed. Billions of dollars worth of cargo have been seized; millions have been paid in ransom. A multinational naval force has attempted to secure a corridor in the Gulf of Aden, through which 12% of the total volume of seaborne oil passes, and U.S., British and Indian naval ships have engaged the pirates by force.

Robert Barnett: Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?

[Robert Barnett, the director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia, is the author of “Lhasa: Streets With Memories.”] THE financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment, bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect. As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last mont

Stanley Fish: An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom

More than a few times in these columns I have tried to deflate the balloon of academic freedom by arguing that it was not an absolute right or a hallowed principle, but a practical and limited response to the particular nature of intellectual work. Now, in a new book — “For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom,” to be published in 2009 — two distinguished scholars of constitutional law, Matthew W. Finkin and Robert C. Post, study the history and present shape of

George Lardner, Jr.: A Pardon to Remember (Re: Marc Rich pardon)

[George Lardner Jr., an associate at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, is working on a history of the presidential pardon power.] WHEN President Bill Clinton pardoned a billionaire fugitive from justice on his last day in office, even usually loyal Democrats were dismayed. Representative Henry Waxman of California called it “bad precedent” and “an end run around the judicial process.” He said it appeared to set a double standard for the wealthy and powerful. T

John Feehery: Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton and the Republican Party's Woes

[John Feehery worked for the House Republican leadership from 1989 to 2005. He is the founder of The Feehery Group, a strategic advocacy firm, and blogs at www.thefeeherytheory.com.] Thomas Jefferson, a gentleman farmer, disliked the hustle and bustle of the big cities, distrusted the moneyed interests and New York financiers, and favored the revolutionary spirit of France. Alexander Hamilton, a New Yorker through and through, saw debt a

Daniel Gross: Don't Get Depressed, It's Not 1929

[Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com. He is the author of Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy.] It's difficult to avoid the comparisons between the current sad state of financial affairs and the Great Depression. "This is not like 1987 or 1998 or 2001," Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said at a conference on Nov. 11. "We will in f

Dick Morris: Obama's betrayed the hopes placed in him by selecting Hillary

It is still hard to believe but, if Hillary Clinton's "confidantes" are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the capstone of betrayal of Obama's promise to be the "change we can believe in." Having upended the Democratic Party, largely over his different views on foreign policy and the war in Iraq, he now turns to the leader of the ancient regime he ousted, derided, mocked a

Jonathan Alter: What Obama Can Learn from FDR's Dodge

[Jonathan Alter is a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine.] Americans are scared and eager for change. They elect the Democratic presidential candidate by a healthy margin, in part because they prefer his temperament. But the outcome is, to most, largely a rejection of the brutal status quo. Every day brings more depressing economic news, with banks teetering and foreclosures skyrocketing. During the transition, the outgoing president tries to rope the new man into the

Roger Kaplan: Piracy Then and Now

[Roger Kaplan is a writer in Washington, D.C.] Reading about the activities of Somali highwaymen, seawaymen rather, brings to mind the circumstances of our Republic's first experience in power projection. In 1785, as soon as the colonies -- battered by the War for Independence -- were in condition to resume the lucrative trade with southern Europe, two American merchant ships were seized by Algerian pirates, and their crews held for ransom. Domestic consi

Daniel Gross: Don't Get Depressed, It's Not 1929

[Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek.] It's difficult to avoid the comparisons between the current sad state of financial affairs and the Great Depression. "This is not like 1987 or 1998 or 2001," Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said at a conference on Nov. 11. "We will in fact look back to the 1929 period to see the kind of slowdown we are seeing now." Time depicted President-elect Barack Obama on its cover as Fr

Eric Boehlert: Covering new presidents ... the media's double standard

In anticipation of the new administration, Beltway media insiders are busy laying the groundwork for how reporters and pundits will treat the new team on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Once a president takes office ... an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters," wrote Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. And former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, discussing the press corps on Fox News, agreed: "They are inevitably going to turn on him,

Elizabeth Kolbert: Bush's last-minute executive orders and regs

When President Jimmy Carter lost his bid for reëlection, in November, 1980, he had lots of unfinished business that he did not intend to leave that way. Carter’s Administration spent the next several weeks generating regulations at an unprecedented rate, until, in its last month in office, it published more than ten thousand pages of new rules. These rules, which, like most issued by federal agencies, needed no congressional approval, touched on everything from crash tests for cars to access to

Edward J. Rollins: Yes, Play Politics in the White House

[Edward J. Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan’s 1984 presidential campaign, was the White House political director from 1981 to 1983 and from 1984 to 1985.] NEARLY three decades ago another presidential transition was taking place after what was defined as a realigning election. In 1980, Ronald Reagan swept into office with a new Senate majority and a gain of more than 30 seats in the House to his party’s caucus. One of the first moves Mr. Reagan made after his inaugura

Mark Schmitt: Grading the Election Theories

The long election cycle featured as many theories about how the election would turn out as there were presidential candidates in those first debates in 2007. Let's give some of the theories a post-final-exam assessment: Emerging Democratic Majority: A-. Let's start with an easy one. After the 2000 election, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published a book arguing that Democrats would build a majority based on nonwhite and Hispanic voters, shifts in the suburbs, and strength among

John B. Judis: Economists know the fatal flaw in our system--but they can't agree how to fix it

For those Americans who are not daily readers of the Financial Times, the past few months have been a crash course in the abstract and obscure instruments and arrangements that have derailed the nation's economy. From mortgage-backed securities to credit default swaps, the financial health of the country has undergone a gory public dissection. And yet, as Barack Obama prepares to take office, one particularly frightening problem has escaped public notice; indeed, it may not even make the agenda

Stephen Birmingham: When ostrich feathers were in vogue, traders thought they would remain popular forever. Fortunes were lost.

[Mr. Birmingham is the author of, among other books, "Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York" and "Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address."] When Sarah Stein told her friends that she was writing a book about feathers, they might have assumed that her subject was a light one. If so, they couldn't have been more wrong. It turns out that "Plumes" -- in part the chronicle of a craze in early 20th-century millinery -- speaks to our cu

Jonathan Chait: Barack Won A Mandate: Here's why you shouldn't let anyone tell you differently

The funny thing about elections is that their meaning undergoes a metamorphosis the very instant they occur. A couple weeks before the vote, a Republican member of Congress declared at a McCain rally, "This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing. It's a referendum on socialism." If you said now that the election was a referendum on socialism, or even mere liberalism, you'd be taken for a left-wing maniac. Political scientists will tell you that a president

Bret Stephens: 'No Excuses' for Liberals

"I make no excuses, I only wear them." Remember that? It was the pitch made by Donna Rice for a pair of tight-fitting stonewashed jeans some 20 years ago. Too bad the brand is long gone, since we're at yet another No Excuses moment in American politics. Specifically: a liberal No Excuses moment. With the election of Barack Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress, liberals must now practice something other than the politics of nostalgia and what-if. Th