Roundup: Media's Take

Herb Keinon: Is the US Justice Department out to get Israeli spies?

The surprise arrest in the US this week of 84-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish for allegedly spying for Israel a generation ago highlights a fascinating little point: One never hears about the US spying on Israel. Why not? Is Washington not interested in inside info on what Israel is up to? Is the CIA, with agents spanning the globe, not keen on securing pre-knowledge of Israel's technological advances in defense and security fields? Unlikely. Rather, t

Noam Scheiber: Why'd Obama Join Trinity in the First Place?

The question is worth revisiting now that his ex-pastor is threatening his entire campaign. I've heard two basic theories since the Wright tapes first surfaced in March. The first is cynical: Obama was a black politician in Chicago with an exotic background and intimidating credentials. He needed a home in a black church to gain credibility with his less educated, less affluent, more parochial-minded constituents. Trinity offered him the requisite cred. The second, no

Michele Willens: Before there was Hillary, there was Helen Gahagan Douglas

If only. In 1950, Richard Nixon, then a 38-year-old first-term Congressman from California, high on Hiss-bashing, ran for the United State Senate. His opponent was a 50-year-old ("but still young looking," according to the New York Times) three-term Congresswoman, Helen Gahagan Douglas. Their race broke all previous records for spending (on his side) and vitriol (almost all on his too). This, after all, was where Nixon first earned his moniker "Tricky Dic

Barbara Crossette: The Clintonian Legacy

[Barbara Crossette, South Asia bureau chief for the New York Times from 1988 to 1991, reported on the first election of Benazir Bhutto and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, which won her a George Polk Award.] That Hillary Clinton has apparently found success in talking tough about foreigners and sinking to Bush-like "politics of fear" only illuminates how little American foreign policy has been seriously debated in the Democratic presidential nominee race, and how little

Patrice de Beer: May ‘68 ... France's politics of memory

[Patrice de Beer is former London and Washington correspondent for Le Monde.] France is approaching a potent anniversary in a strange mood. The student riots of May 1968 radically shook an arch-conservative society and came near to toppling then-president Charles de Gaulle - as well as inspiring students in Europe, the United States and Japan to emulate Paris's "example". It is natural, then, that the fortieth anniversary is being vigorously commemorated; more than 100 boo

John Lundberg: Civilization's First Attack Ads

If you've missed Rudy Giuliani's 9-11 exploitation ads or waited anxiously for Swiftboaters to start running some shadowy Bin Laden video, this 2008 Democratic primary is for you! At the rate it's devolving, voters in South Dakota and Montana can look forward to Deal or No Deal getting interrupted by footage of Hitler at the Reichstag--with Obama. All the ridiculous sniping got me wondering how politicians went after one another befo

Max Boot: What should we call Islamist terrorists?

[Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of"War Made New: Weapons, Warriors and the Making of the Modern World" (Gotham Books).] The Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. government is moving to kill off jihadists, Islamo-fascists, and mujahedeen. Not the people: the words. Reports from the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terroris

Roger Pulvers: Hail and farewell to the world's greatest 'Good Gringo' U.S. president

On April 1, the widely read History News Network (HNN) Web site announced the results of a survey it conducted among historians. In what was, alas, not an April Fool's joke, they asked the historians whether they considered the presidency of George W. Bush a success or a failure. Out of 109 historians surveyed, 107 said they viewed the Bush presidency as a failure, although only 67 of them classified him as "the worst president in the nation's history" —

Ben Johnson: Hillary's Radical Skeletons

[Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine and author of the book 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving.] Integral to Hillary Clinton's triumph in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday, Jacob Laksin observed in FrontPage Magazine, was convincing Keystone State voters that she “understood the curious ways of more humble folk.” The former feminist liberationist, who channeled dead spirits, belittled those who “stayed home and baked cookies and

Peter Wilby: The last excuse for the Iraq war is founded on a myth

[Peter Wilby is a former editor of the New Statesmanpeter.wilby3@ntlworld.com.] Now it is clear that Saddam Hussein had no WMD, that al-Qaida has become stronger in Iraq, and that liberal democracy has failed to spread through the Middle East, one fallback justification for the Iraq invasion remains: it overthrew a murderous, fascist dictator. ven if it went catastrophically wrong, runs the argument, the invasion had

Sidney Blumenthal: The GOP on the verge of imploding

[Editor's note: This is excerpted by permission from the new book "The Strange Death of Republican America," published this month by Union Square Press, along with the 2008 edition of "The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power."]

George F. Will: 25 years after the Nation at Risk report card

Let us limp down memory lane to mark this week's melancholy 25th anniversary of a national commission's report that galvanized Americans to vow to do better. Today the nation still ignores what had been learned years before 1983. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once puckishly said that data indicated that the leading determinant of the quality of public schools, measured by standardized tests, was the schools' proximity to Canada. He meant that the geographic correlation was stronger t

David Brooks: Inspired by medieval approach to the stars

Over the past 15 months, I've been writing pretty regularly about the presidential campaign, which has meant thinking a lot about attack ads, tracking polls and which campaign is renouncing which over-the-line comment from a surrogate that particular day. But on my desk for much of this period I have kept a short essay, which I stare at longingly from time to time. It's an essay about how people in the Middle Ages viewed the night sky, and it's about a mentality so totally removed f

John Judis: The Next McGovern?

[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] ... Obama also lost ground among the upscale white professionals that had helped him win states like Wisconsin, Maryland, and Virginia. For instance, Obama won my own Montgomery County, Maryland by 55 to 43 percent but he lost suburban Philadelphia's very similar Montgomery County by 51 to 49 percent to Clinton. He lost upscale arty Bucks County by 62 to 38

Michael Crowley: Barack in Iraq

As a candidate for president in 1968, Richard Nixon ran on what is (apocryphally) remembered as a "secret plan to end the war" in Vietnam. We now know, of course, that Nixon had no such intention. Today, Barack Obama's campaign is largely based around a promise to "end the war" in Iraq by withdrawing troops within 16 months. But some Washington foreign policy mandarins insist this isn't possible--that a total U.S. withdrawal isn't achievable and Obama knows it. T

David Sirota: The Ludlow legacy and labor's troubles in Colombia

[David Sirota is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota] Ninety-four years ago on April 20, America made international news when a government-sanctioned paramilitary unit murdered Colorado union organizers at a Rockefeller-owned coal mine. The Ludlow Massacre was "a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfar

E. J. Dionne: Is Obama JFK or Adlai Stevenson?

The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? Is he a detached former law review editor or a passionate agent of change? Is he an upscale reformer focused on process or a populist who will turn Washington and the country around? One of the central lessons of the Pennsylvania primary campaign is that Obama's personality is now far more important than either Hillary Clinton's or John McCain's. That

Steve Chapman: About Obama's Terrorist Acquaintance

... Among many liberals, extremism in the defense of "social justice" is no vice. When the folk singer Pete Seeger got a medal by President Clinton, no one cared that he was a veteran apologist for Stalin who still regarded himself as a communist. That indifference betrayed a double standard that conscientious liberals should reject. By that standard, Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don't much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can ov

Andrew O'Hehir: The haunting of the Democrats

... Even in the annals of Democratic ritual suicide, the 2008 campaign is something special: It's not just that the protracted and painful nomination struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeats all the classic themes of intra-Democratic conflict -- left vs. center, reformer vs. the Establishment, pragmatist vs. idealist, call it what you will -- up to and including the fact that the differences between the candidates are mainly semiotic rather than substantive. In his

Thomas Frank: Obama's Touch of Class

[Mr. Frank is the author of "The Wrecking Crew," forthcoming from Metropolitan Books. He will begin a weekly column each Wednesday in the Journal on May 14.] Allow me to introduce myself. According to the general clucking of the national punditry, my 2004 book – "What's the Matter With Kansas?" – is supposed to have persuaded Barack Obama to describe the yeomanry of Pennsylvania as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or . . . anti-trade