Roundup: Media's Take

Kenneth Timmerman: Media Manipulation by Palestinians Takes in the Gullible Again

[Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, New York), and Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.] During the Cold War, under Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the United States government paid special attention to Soviet efforts to manipulate world public opinion against the United States. They referred to these Soviet efforts as “active measures.” A special unit at the United States Inf

Paul Rogat Loeb: Joe Lieberman's Loyalties

This isn't the first time Joe Lieberman's placed loyalty to his career above all other allegiances. Afraid that Connecticut's Democratic voters will reject him in the primary, he's now hedging his bets by planning to run as an independent if he loses. "I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party," he says, and tries to make this sound noble. Lieberman made a similar choice in the 2000 election. He hedged his bets then as well, by running for reelection as Conn

Sidney Blumenthal: The imperial presidency crushed

The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Hamdan v. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al., on June 29 did far more than settle the limited question of whether alleged terrorist detainees can be tried before secret military tribunals. By declaring Bush's position unconstitutional, the court in effect judged his concept of his presidency and his methods in his"global war on terror" illegitimate. In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul

Jeff Jacoby: About our 'dictator'

IN MANY QUARTERS it has long been taken for granted that George W. Bush is an aspiring dictator, ravenous for power and all too willing to shred the constitutional checks and balances that restrain presidential authority. Of course this kind of paranoia is routine in the ideological fever swamps . But you can hear such things said about Bush even in respectable precincts far from the fringe. For example: When it was reported in May that the National Security Agency has been analyzin

Jim Castagnera: The DNA Made Me Do It

[Mr. Castagnera, a Philadelphia journalist and attorney, is the Associate Provost at Rider University and author of the weekly newspaper column “Attorney at Large.”]              Comedian Flip Wilson used to dress up like a sexy lady, Geraldine, whose excuse for everything was, “The devil made me do it.”  Although Flip kept his date with the devil in 1998, the phrase has passed into the American lexicon. 

Josiah Bunting III: How do our leaders shape up to the Founders?

[Gen. Bunting, former superintendent of VMI, is president of the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation.] More than 40 years ago the historian Henry Steele Commager asked how it was that the British colonies in North America could have produced such a galaxy of leaders: a generation that made a revolution and established a new and enduring nation. In talent, he argued, the leadership rivaled that of the Athens of Pericles and the England of Elizabeth I, a florescence of wisdom, character, virtu

Debating Peter Beinart's thesis that only liberals can win the war on terrorism

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Peter Beinart, is editor-at-large at The New Republic. He is the author of the new book The Good Fight: Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. FP:Peter Beinart welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is a pleasure and privilege to be in your company. Beinart: Nice to be talking with you.FP:David Horowitz will join us for the discussion, but let's first talk to you about you

Chip Ward: The Pentagon Plan to Blow Up Part of the Utah Desert

[Chip Ward is a political activist, writer, and a library administrator. He is the author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West (Verso) and Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land (Shearwater/Island Press).] Shock and awe is coming home. The Bush administration is planning to conduct future preemptive wars with "mini-nukes" and, to that end, wants to set off a nuclear-sized explosion at the government's Nevada Test Site, sixty-five miles n

Sidney Blumenthal: Ron Suskind's new book "The One Percent Doctrine" exposes a Bush administration culture steeped in cynical political manipulation

On the night of 12 June 2006, shortly after Karl Rove received an email from his lawyer Robert Luskin informing him he would not be indicted by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the president's chief political advisor appeared before a New Hampshire Republican Party group to deliver a call to arms for the midterm elections. Rove defined the theme for the upcoming contest, the last one of the Bush presidency, as the same one he had set after 11 September 2001, when he o

Robert Sullivan: Getting from Here to There a Little Slower May Be Welcome

This week, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Interstate highway system, a convoy will arrive in Washington, D.C., after driving I-80 across the country. It began in San Francisco and consists of ecstatic highway engineers and road historians; automobile-club representatives eager to build more Interstate highways; a leader of the "Go RVing" campaign, which serves the nation's eight million recreational-vehicle users; a descendant of President Dwight Eisenhower, who rode in

Raymond Ibrahim: Placing Zarqawi’s death in perspective

[Raymond Ibrahim is a Language Specialty Assistant at the Library of Congress's Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division.] ... will the assassination of an Islamist leader yield anything greater than satisfaction at seeing justice served? History provides an answer to these questions. Consider the progress of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and oldest Islamic fundamentalist organization today, once joined by a fourteen-year-old Aymin

William Greider: The era of corporate welfare and trickle-down economics championed by Republicans for 25 years is over

[William Greider is the author of, most recently, "The Soul of Capitalism" (Simon & Schuster).] Momentous change is approaching in American politics. Conceivably, the turning point has already arrived, too indistinct to recognize. We are witnessing the demise of the reigning economic ideology. A deep shift of this kind is a very rare event, one that comes along only every thirty or forty years. Economic disorders accumulate that the orthodoxy cannot answer and may even

Robert Kagan: On Hating America

I recently took part in a panel discussion in London about civil conflict and "failed states" around the world, centered on the interesting work of the British economist Paul Collier. The panelists included the son of a famous African liberation-leader-turned-dictator, the former leader of a South American guerrilla group, a Pakistani journalist, a U.N. official and the head of a nongovernmental humanitarian organization. Naturally, our reasoned and learned discussion quickly transmogr

Yves Roucaute: Anti-Americanism drives the hysteria over Guantanamo

[Mr. Roucaute, a professor of political science and philosophy at Nanterre University, is author of "Le Néo-conservatisme est un humanisme."(P.U.F., 2005).] The old Continent is wilting in the global war against terror, just as it did when faced off against fascism and then communism. When at today's summit with U.S. President George W. Bush the European Union will once again take its ally to task over Guantanamo, it will expose its own, not America's, most serious moral c

Ross Douthat: Should Obama Run?

Iowa and New Hampshire are still 18 months away, but the 2008 presidential campaign has already entered its Cuomo hour -- the twilight period before a race when the press grows weary of the likely candidates and begins casting about for big names and dark horses. It's a moment when imaginations run wild: Conservative pundits confidently announce that only Rudy can beat Hillary; a glorified PowerPoint presentation is all it takes for Al Gore to be anointed savior of his party; and the fence-sitti

Max Boot: NATO's Afghanistan Challenge

THE NORTH Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 to contain communist expansionism in Europe. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the widespread expectation was that NATO would go the way of the Warsaw Pact. Instead, the alliance's role has grown since the end of the Cold War. In 1995, it fought its first war, to pacify Bosnia, followed by the 1999 conflict over Kosovo, where a NATO peacekeeping contingent remains. But it is in Afghanistan, a country about as remote as you can get from th

Norman Solomon: Their Barbarism, and Ours

[The paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” was published in June. For information, go to: www.warmadeeasy.com.] The Baghdad bureau chief of the New York Times could not have been any clearer. “The story really takes us back into the 8th century, a truly barbaric world,” John Burns said. He was speaking June 20 on the PBS “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” describing what happ

Steve Benen: What if three admitted adulterers run for president and no one cares?

Last month, The New York Times published a 2,000-word, front-page dissection of Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage. It contained no real news, few named sources, and plenty of gossip masquerading as political coverage. Observing that the Clintons typically spend 14 days of each month together--hardly unusual for a couple that includes a senator and a peripatetic former president--the Times opted for the half-empty conclusion that the two lead "largely separate lives." The story also m

James Traub: The Submerging Republican Majority

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove, the political mastermind George W. Bush called Boy Genius, was wont to draw an analogy with the election of 1896, in which the Republican William McKinley drubbed William Jennings Bryan. McKinley's election ushered in a 35-year era chiefly characterized by G.O.P. dominance; so, too, Rove argued, would Bush's hasten the progress toward an era of virtual one-party rule. And Rove's bold prediction seemed plausible. Over time, the Republicans have in

Peter Collier & David Horowitz: The Party of Retreat and Defeat

As the fall elections approach, the Democrats have formally unveiled their platform for the war in Iraq: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. At the very moment that documents captured from the Zarqawi death site indicate that Al Qaeda feels it is losing its war against the Iraqi future and has become so desperate that its only hope to prevail is by embroiling the U.S. in war with Iran; at the very moment Iraq’s democratically elected government is establishing itself as a funct