Roundup: Media's Take

Sean Carey: Britain's worst gift - an island to America

[Dr Sean Carey is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM), Roehampton University.] Reciprocity – "the obligation to give and the obligation to receive" - as the French sociologist, Marcel Mauss, noted in his hugely influential work 1923 work Essai sur le don, is the basis of social life. Mauss observes that gifts and hospitality (which often involve considerable material sacrifice) are imbued with mora

Humberto Fontova: Hollywood Once Hailed Offshore Drilling

[Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. Visit www.hfontova.com] Louisiana takes many hits as "the northernmost banana republic." Yuppies and Greenies constitute a rare, exotic and even comical species down here – to the immense benefit of America's energy needs. "Progressive" and "enlightened" would not be terms Obama's Bay Area supporters would use to

Walter Shapiro: Why Clinton voters will come back to the fold

... Despite the efforts of Clinton activists like clothing entrepreneur Susie Tompkins Buell to highlight feminist grievances with the nomination process, the truth is that the Clintonites really have no alternative but to toe the party line. And there is a strong presumption among political scientists -- based on a landmark study from the 1970s and buttressed by statistical analyses of polling data from other presidential elections -- that voters rarely carry resentments from the primaries into

Kathy G.: Barack Obama ... deeply flawed, and it's our job to make him better

[Kathy G. is a shrill feminist, bleeding heart liberal, hardcore policy wonk, political junkie, ardent cinephile, and lover of 19th century novels. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two loveable mutts, where she is attempting, amidst numerous diverting distractions, to complete a Ph.D. in the social sciences.] One thing before I get to anything else -- if you're as disgusted as I am by the way Barack Obama and the rest of the Dems folded like a cheap camera on the FISA issue, do some

Matthew Parris: The Taleban can't win in Afghanistan - but nor can we

[Matthew Parris's diary appears in The Times on Thursdays, and his Opinion column on Saturdays.] It has been hard over the past fortnight to avert our eyes for long from Helmand, and from the task facing the British Forces in Afghanistan. As I write there have been nine deaths in the past nine days, and - although perhaps it shouldn't - the fact that one was a woman has only sharpened the media spotlight. Sadly, the battle for Helmand is a good story. The plot is simple, the human t

Kimberly Strassel: Farewell, New Democrats

Listen closely to all those cheers for newly crowned nominee Barack Obama, and in the background you'll catch the notes of a funeral march. Resting, if not in peace, are the New Democrats. The Illinois senator's primary victory marked the end of many things, and one looks to be his party's 20-year experiment with ideological centrism. The New Dems are still out there, still urging their party to fight its natural liberal instincts. But who's listening? Buoyed by the Republican implo

Abe Greenwald: The Chamberlain Defense

[Abe Greenwald is assistant online editor of COMMENTARY and writes regularly for its blog Contentions.] Samantha Power, former foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama campaign, has penned a strange defense of Barack Obama's willingness to negotiate with America's enemies. In this week's Time magazine, Power argues that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's diplomatic engagement with Adolf Hitler in 1938 should not sully diplomacy's good name. She writes: . . .

Chip Ward: Radioactive Déjà Vu in the American West

[After sixteen years on the frontline of campaigns to make polluters accountable, Chip Ward moved into the remote redrock canyons of the Colorado Plateau. There, as a board member of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, he is helping to protect one of America's last great wilderness areas from mineral development and other threats. He is the author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and

Dick Morris: Why oil prices have gone through the roof

Gas prices are the first important issue in the 2008 elections. But both parties have been pathetic in their solutions and, one suspects, in their understanding of what is going on. Democrats call for windfall profits taxes. Bad idea. How can you get oil companies to explore and drill if you tax away their profits? Republicans focus on a gas tax “holiday,” an 18-cent palliative to gas prices that now top $4.50. Fadel Gheit, managing director of oil and gas research for

Thomas I. Palley: Time is up for Milton Friedman

[Thomas I. Palley is the founder of the Economics for Democratic and Open Societies Project. ] The US Federal Reserve has recently received much criticism from economic conservatives who claim it has ignored inflation, thereby risking a rerun of the inflation show of the 1970s. In response, renowned Princeton economist Paul Krugman has come to the Fed's defense, arguing today's inflation is fundamentally different from that of the 1970s. Krugman is right, but his argum

Alvaro Vargas Llosa: We the European People

[Alvaro Vargas Llosa is the editor of Lessons from the Poor and the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute.] ... The European Union finds itself re-enacting, more than two centuries later, the polemic between the Federalists who wanted a Constitution for the United States and the Anti-Federalists who opposed what they considered the emergence of a political leviathan. There are, of course, many differences--which is why it is unclear that Europeans will e

Jacob Heilbrunn: Obama sounds a lot like past Republican presidents on the issue of diplomacy

[Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at The National Interest.] Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has been pummeling Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) pledge to engage in diplomacy with America’s enemies as dangerously naive. Whether the issue is dealing with Iran or Iraq, Senator McCain declared in a June speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “Senator Obama does not have the experience and the knowledge and clearly the judgment, my friends.” That charge has been echoed by oth

Rich Lowry: Al-Qaeda’s Vietnam ... An Islamist backlash

[Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.] Lately, the Iraq war has looked more and more like another Vietnam — not for us, but for al-Qaeda. CIA Director Michael Hayden says the terror group has suffered “near-strategic defeat” in Iraq. It has been routed from Anbar, Diyala, and Baghdad provinces, and now is getting a beating in its last stronghold of Mosul, in the north. It is reviled by the Iraqi populace, and its downward trajectory began with indigenous uprisings

Shayana Kadidal: Newt Gingrich Pulls a Trent Lott

In my last post, I gave in to the temptation to respond to John McCain's comments on Friday, calling the Supreme Court's Guantánamo decision "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," by asking how it might compare to several other horribles--Dred Scott v. Sandford (the case holding that blacks were not persons, undoing the Missouri Compromise and setting the stage for the civil war); Korematsu v. United States (upholding the forced removal of Japanese-Americans from

Joshua Spivak: The real reason running mates matter

[Joshua Spivak, a public relations executive and attorney, is a research fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform at Wagner College, in Long Island, N.Y.] We're already hearing plenty of chatter about possible vice presidential choices. But as pundits and politicians debate who will provide party tickets with the most electoral bang, the one thing we won't hear is why the VP selection is important. It is important, though not for electoral reasons. Stud

Peter F. Schaefer: What Might Have Been in Iraq

[Peter F. Schaefer is a researcher and writer for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation who last year completed a study on U.S. pre-occupation planning in Japan. Presently he heads the GlobaLand Group, which registers informal property in poor countries.] No matter the outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the dust settles the United States will remain the world’s only superpower. And though the American people may be tired of overseas wars now, the U.S. military will undoubtedly bec

John Feffer: Why North Korea Was a Global Crisis Canary

[John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of numerous articles on food policy and on North Korea.] Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agricu

Biographer Kerwin Swint explains how news honcho Roger Ailes has pushed the country to the right for the past four decades.

When Richard Nixon ran for the presidency in 1968, eight years after his pasty, glowering visage in four televised debates with John Kennedy had, arguably, cost him the White House, he knew he needed a makeover. He hired a young producer from "The Mike Douglas Show" to repackage him for mass consumption. Roger Ailes sold Nixon to the American public, and became a sought-after Republican political consultant. Between 1968 and 1989, he advised everybody from Ronald Reagan to George H.W.

Karl E. Meyer: Another Bad Deal for Baghdad

[Karl E. Meyer, a former member of The Times editorial board and the editor at large of World Policy Journal, is the co-author, with Shareen Blair Brysac, of “Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East.”] WITH only perfunctory debate, the Bush administration is pressuring a divided Iraqi government to approve a security agreement that could haunt Washington’s relations with Baghdad for years to come. The “strategic alliance” that President Bush is proposing eerily resembles

Adam Cohen: After 75 Years, the Working Poor Still Struggle for a Fair Wage

At the height of the Great Depression, industry convinced President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress to enact a law allowing companies to collude to drive up prices. To balance out this giveaway to big business, the law gave workers something that they had long been fighting for: the first federal minimum wage. This week marks the 75th anniversary of the National Industrial Recovery Act — which Roosevelt signed June 16, 1933, at the end of his famous first 100 days — and of the feder