Roundup: Media's Take

Michael Barone: Rethinking the Iraq Critics

[Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications—including the Economist and the New York Times.] In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we've learned how

Malcolm A. Kline: Cold War on Campus

The latest survey on academic bias has sent academics into their usual state of denial despite evidence of same that frequently stares them right in the face. “Taken together, 40 percent of the Americans in the survey said professors often use their classrooms as political platforms,” Robin Wilson of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on April 4th of a Gallup poll. “When that many Americans think this happens often, higher ed has a problem,” says S. Robert Lichter, director o

Michael Crowley: How impeachment explains the Clinton campaign

The Clintons find themselves victimized and under siege. The presidency is being stolen from them. The press is out to get them. They deride elites and champion the masses. They live in a constant state of emergency. But they will endure any humiliation, ride out any crisis, fight on even when fighting seems hopeless. That might sound like a fair summary of how Bill and Hillary Clinton have viewed the past five months. But it also happens to describe what, until now, was the greates

Glenn Greenwald: John McCain’s Vietnam-Based View of War

[Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.] Former Army Captain and military analyst Phillip Carter writes today in his Washington Post blog of the “stabbed in the back narrative” of Vietnam in the context

Joe Conason: Was Hillary channeling George Wallace?

As long as Hillary Clinton is willing to spend the money and energy needed to continue her campaign, she certainly can ignore the pundits who insist that the Democratic nominating contest is over. What she should not ignore, however, is the damage that her increasingly reckless behavior is inflicting on her reputation and that of her husband -- especially when she starts to sound like a reincarnation of the late George Wallace. When Clinton blathered on about "totally oblitera

Jack Kelly: Obama Needs a History Lesson

[Jack Kelly writes aticles on political issues for Real Clear Politics.] In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon. In defending his stated intent to meet with America's enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies,

Gary Sick: The strategy behind Hillary Clinton's comment that she would obliterate Iran

[Gary Sick, a political scientist at Columbia University was a National Security Council staffer under Carter and Reagan.] Hillary Clinton's warning that the United States could "obliterate" Iran if that country should "foolishly consider" launching an attack on Israel is, of course, pandering to a broad American constituency that wants to hear tough rhetoric about Iran. It is also intended to appeal to a constituency that needs constant reassurance that America'

Jesse Walker: The Paranoid Style Is American Politics

[Mr. Walker is the managing editor of Reason.] ... In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, the historian Bernard Bailyn showed that the worldview of the patriots who would soon revolt against England included a strong belief, in the words of one colonist, that "a deep-laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty." At the same time, Bailyn notes, British administrators "were as

George Will: Conservatives should beware of presidential power

... A 1948 photograph here shows Truman at a lectern delivering a campaign speech in Los Angeles. Seated near the lectern is the man who had introduced Truman, 37-year-old Ronald Reagan. Between Truman's and Reagan's presidencies, between the dawn and dusk of what John Kennedy called the Cold War's "long twilight struggle," Americans accepted extravagant -- or so the Founders would have thought -- assertions of presidential powers. These assertions have been made by presidents of both

Steve Plaut: How 'Nakba' Proves There's No Palestinian Nation

[Steven Plaut, a frequent contributor to The Jewish Press, is a professor at Haifa University. His book “The Scout” is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.] Over the past few years, the term nakba (also spelled naqba) has become the favorite nonsense word of the Anti-Israel Lobby. Meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, it has been embraced by anti-Semites all over the planet to refer to Israel’s creation

Geoffrey R. Stone: McCain's Justice

[Geoffrey R. Stone is the Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. From 1987 to 1994 he served as Dean of the University of Chicago Law School and from 1994 to 2002 he served as Provost of the University of Chicago. ] John McCain's May 6 statement on the role of judges in our constitutional system might very well qualify as one of the most ignorant statements ever made by a presidential candidate on this most important subject.

Rep. Joe Baca: Cinco de Mayo's celebrated in the US

Every year, as we approach the 5th of May, stores and companies begin to promote Cinco de Mayo in their storefronts and through their advertisements. There are office parties, full of festive decorations, and children at school might have the opportunity to take a swing at a piñata. This splendor is to celebrate a date of significance to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike. While this is not Mexican Independence Day (that is on September 16th), it is a date pivotal to the history o

Jeff Greenfield: Obama and Orwell and elitism

[Mr. Greenfield is a commentator on CBS News.] Elitism has bedeviled American liberalism for the better part of four decades. It undermined the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, and now it's making mischief in the Obama campaign every bit as much as the omnipresence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The charge that liberal candidates don't connect with or understand the values and beliefs of regular Americans is embedded in old epithets like "limousine l

Humberto Fontova: Jeremiah Wright's Cuban Friends

[Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him and Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.] Was it remotely conceivable that someone with Jeremiah's Wright's worldview and connections had somehow avoided a pilgrimage to the world capitol of Yankee-hatred, to worship and commiserate with its high priests? Not a chance. Reverend Wright was part of Revered Jesse Jackson's 300 person entourage to Havan

Steve Chapman: McCain finds his own radical friend

[Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. E-mail: schapman@tribune.com] Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology—and who has never shown remorse or admitted error? When the candidate in question is Barack Obama, John McCain says no. But when the candidate in question is John McCain, he'

Delbert Spurlock: Matthew Ridgway warned against relying on an all-volunteer military, and now we can see why

[Delbert Spurlock is a former general counsel and assistant secretary of the Army (dubert@live.com). He lives in Reston, Va.] America's model for an all-volunteer military has now become a casualty of our war of choice in Iraq. The consequences for our military, our young people and their families, and our diplomatic flexibility to sustain our current commitments and to meet future challenges will be significant. None of this is being discussed i

E.J.Dionne: Not to absolve Reverend Wright of his behavior, but ...

[E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University.] Do white right-wing preachers have it easier than black left-wing preachers? Is there a double standard? The political explosion around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was inevitable, given Wright's personal closeness to Barack Ob

Elizabeth Wurzel: Obama's Other Radical Friends

[Miss Wurtzel, a recent graduate of Yale Law School, is the author of "Prozac Nation" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).] ... Apparently, back when he was running for state senate, Barack Obama had fund-raising events at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and there's been some press about the senator's friendship with this controversial Weathercouple. Many reporters are well aware, even though Mr. Obama has described his connection to Ayers and Dohrn as "flimsy,"

Pepe Escobar: The Iranian Chessboard ... Five Ways to Think about Iran under the Gun

[Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News. He's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the

Clarence Jones: MLK and the Jews

[Mr. Jones was Martin Luther King's personal attorney and close adviser. He is the co-author, with Joel Engel, of "What Would Martin Say" (Harper, 2008), from which this was adapted.] Earlier this month, at a Los Angeles event for the national African-American fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, the keynote speaker launched into an anti-Semitic tirade – directed at the fraternity's guest of honor. The shocking episode shows just how far we've strayed from the original vision of th