Roundup: Media's Take

Scott Horton: Of Republicans and Banana-Republicans

[Scott Horton is a contributor to Harper's Magazine and writes No Comment for the Harper's website. A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. ] I have spent a good bit of time in the archives over the last two weeks, reading materials from the first two decades of the Republican Party – the formative conventions, the campaign of John Charles Frém

Jerry Bower: Ismail Ax ... The Shooter Was Another 'Son of Sacrifice'

[Jerry Bowyer is a radio and television talk show host.] First it was Johnny Muhammad, now it was Cho Sueng Hui aka Ismail Ax. Precisely how many mass shooters have to turn out to have adopted Muslim names before we get it? Islam has become the tribe of choice of those who hate American society. I'm not talking about people who grew up as Muslims, confident and secure in their faith, good fathers, sons and neighbors. I'm talking about the angry, malignant, narcissist loners who want

Robert Kuttner: Can someone reclaim American liberalism?

Three times in my political adulthood, we have seen the exhaustion of a conservative ideology and presidency. Under Presidents Nixon and Bush II, the ingredients were corruption, corporate excess, and overreach of presidential power. During the 12 years of Reagan and Bush I, the hallmark was the failure of conservative economics. And twice, the electorate ousted Republicans only to get centrist Democrats, who ran more competent administrations but did little to redress the structure

Martin Wainwright: On the sale of the Iranian captives' stories (Churchill did it)

Just as a coda to the great scrap about our lads and lass in Iran and their right, or not, to sell their story of captivity, let's remember the record in this field of one of history's most celebrated Englishmen. Scarcely had young Winston Churchill got his uniform off after the Malakand campaign on the North West Frontier of India in 1897 than he was dashing off a book about it, The Malakand Field Force, and not for free either. His publisher paid him £600, which is £46,795.62 at t

David Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey: Is war guilt behind Berlin's aggressive embrace of international "law"?

[Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the U.S. Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush.] Call it a humanitarian offensive, or call it historical revisionism, but Germany is on the march again. Seventeen years after German reunification, and 61 after top Nazis were condemned at the Nuremberg Trials, Berlin is taking a newly assertive role in attempting to define permissible international conduct. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims that there is no

Oliver Kamm: Admire Kurt Vonnegut – but forget his politics

[Kamm is a British journalist.] ... The inventiveness of the early novels will long retain their capacity to stimulate and surprise. But a writer for our times? No. He was a writer for a time that has been and gone. His appeal rested in large part on a view of history that deserves to be treated as a period curio. Vonnegut experienced one of the great traumas of 20th-century history. As a prisoner of war in the Second World War, he lived through the bombing of Dresden.

Jonathan Rauch: Learning From Ike

Dwight Eisenhower, for all his rambling amiability, was capable of vehemence. He showed it memorably at a news conference on August 11, 1954. Ray L. Scherer of NBC asked him about "increasing suggestions that we should embark on a preventive war with the Communist world, some of these suggestions by people in high places." Scherer was talking about Red China, which was rattling its sabers at Taiwan (then called Formosa) and would soon begin shelling Taiwanese forces in what would rapid

David Selbourne: No more Pax Americana

[David Selbourne is the author of The Losing Battle with Islam.] With both houses of the US Congress set to maintain their challenge to President Bush’s conduct of the conflict in Iraq — and being accused in turn of ‘meddling in military strategy’ and of wanting to ‘set a date for surrender’ — America’s problems in its so-called ‘war on terror’ are deepening. In the gathering disorder, the recent visit to Damascus of Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, a v

George Beres: An Easter Service at a Fundamentalist Church

[After a career as publicist for college athletics (Northwestern and Oregon), the writer became manager of the Speakers Bureau at the University of Oregon. He now is an investigative journalist, with sons as TV newsmen in Madison, Wis., and Nashville.] Revelations. I know that as a chapter in the Christian bible. Revelation. That's what I had when in early April I for the first time attended an Easter service in a fundamentalist Christian church in Eugene. The Easter morni

John Perazzo: The Nine Lives of Al Sharpton

[John Perazzo is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations. For more information on his book, click here. E-mail him at wsbooks25@hotmail.com ] By now everyone knows about the recent idiotic remarks that longtime broadcaster Don Imus made last week about some black members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, to whom he referred as “nappy-headed hos.” Imus’ words require no comment;

Behzad Yaghmaian: How a CIA Coup d'État in Iran and My Life Became One

[Behzad Yaghmaian is the author of Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West (Delta Trade paperbacks 2006) and Social Change in Iran: An Eyewitness Account of Dissent, Defiance, and New Movements for Rights. He is a professor of political economy at Ramapo College of New Jersey.] I am a child of the coup d'état, born in Iran a few days after the CIA helped overthrow the popular, democratic government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953.

Robert Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter. The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of t

Rebecca Mead: Are stay-at-home mothers putting themselves—and feminism—at risk?

When Betty Friedan wrote “The Feminine Mystique,” forty-four years ago, she did more than launch a revolution by identifying “the problem that has no name”—the crushing ennui of the modern housewife. She also invited a bit of wordplay that has proved irresistible both to her detractors and to her would-be successors. If “The Feminine Mystique” has acquired the status of a classic, the various iterations of “The Feminine Mistake” have provided something of a barometer of a shifting cultural clima

Adam Cohen: Bush v. Congress ... The Looming Battle Over Executive Privilege

In the summer of 1974, Richard Nixon bet his presidency on the doctrine of executive privilege, and lost. Nixon’s lawyer, James St. Clair, argued to the Supreme Court that he did not have to give a special prosecutor the Watergate tape recordings of Nixon talking with various advisers. But in the oral argument, the justices were skeptical. Lewis Powell, the courtly Virginian, asked: “Mr. St. Clair, what public interest is there in preserving secrecy with respect to a criminal conspiracy?”

Joseph Epstein: The Chicago Tribune under Jewish ownership?

[Mr. Epstein is the author, most recently, of "Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide" (HarperCollins, 2006).] "World's Greatest Newspaper," the Chicago Tribune used to bill itself with P.T. Barnumesque modesty. World's Greatest it never was, but, viewed from my neighborhood in Chicago, it always seemed the world's least Jewish newspaper. Which makes the fact that the paper is now owned by Sam Zell, son of immigrant Jewish parents from Poland, the first of the

David McNeill and C.M. Mason: On Japan’s Death Penalty

[David McNeill writes regularly for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the London Independent and other publications. He is a Tokyo-based coordinator of Japan Focus.C. M. Mason is a freelance writer based in Tokyo.] Japan’s death penalty is cruel, secretive and out of step with much of the developed world say its opponents. As a record 97 men and 5 women await the hangman’s noose, one man alive and free who knows its true horrors speaks. After breakfast on Christmas Day

Congressional Research Service: Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications

From the Washington Administration to the present, Congress and the President have enacted 11 separate formal declarations of war against foreign nations in five different wars. Each declaration has been preceded by a presidential request either in writing or in person before a joint session of Congress. The reasons cited in justification for the requests have included armed attacks on United States territory or its citizens and threats to United States rights or interests as a sovere

Sidney Blumenthal: The discovery of a previously unknown treasure chest of e-mails buried by the Bush administration may prove to be as informative as Nixon's secret White House tapes

The rise and fall of the Bush presidency has had four phases: the befuddled period of steady political decline during the president's first nine months; the high tide of hubris from Sept. 11, 2001, through the 2004 election; the self-destructive overreaching to consolidate a one-party state from 2005 to 2006, culminating in the repudiation of the Republican Congress; and, now, the terminal stage, the great unraveling, as the Democratic Congress works to uncover the abuses of the previous six yea

Norman Solomon: While McCain Walks in McNamara’s Footsteps

[Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com] The media spectacle that John McCain made of himself in Baghdad on April 1 was yet another reprise of a ghastly ritual. Senator McCain expressed “very cautious optimism” and told reporters that the latest version of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is “making progress.” Three years ago, in early April 2004, when an insu

Milton Viorst: Richard Nixon's Mideast blunder

[MILTON VIORST has covered the Middle East for 40 years. His most recent book is "Storm from the East: The Struggle between the Arab World and the Christian West."] IN HER ACCLAIMED new book, "Nixon and Mao," Margaret MacMillan reminds readers, quite accurately, that Richard Nixon's bold act of diplomacy in promoting the American opening to China in 1972 made the world a safer, more stable place. But, at the same time, readers reflect on Nixon's missed opportunit