Roundup: Media's Take

Max Boot: Loose lips win Pulitzers

ON JUNE 7, 1942, shortly after the Battle of Midway, the Chicago Tribune carried a scoop: "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea." The story, written by a correspondent who had seen intelligence reports left in an officer's cabin, reported that the U.S. knew in advance the composition of the Japanese fleet. It didn't say where this information came from, but senior officers privy to the U.S. success in breaking Japanese codes were apoplectic at this security breach. The Justice De

John Nichols: Impeachment From Below ... Legislators Lobby Congress

Inside the Beltway, legislators have been slow to support moves to censure or impeach President Bush and other members of the administration. Only 33 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed on as cosponsors of Congressman John Conyers' resolution calling for the creation of a select committee to investigate the administration's preparations for war before receiving congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing of torture, and re

Paul Rogat Loeb: Dying for Nixon, Dying for Bush

[Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association, and winner of the Nautilus Award for best social change book of the year. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org.] "I didn't want to die for Nixon," said a man I met recently in a Seattle park. He'd served on

John Dean: George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President

President George W. Bush's presidency is a disaster - one that's still unfolding. In a mid-2004 column, I argued that, at that point, Bush had already demonstrated that he possessed the least attractive and most troubling traits among those that political scientist James Dave Barber has cataloged in his study of Presidents' personality types. Now, in early 2006, Bush has continued to sink lower in his public approval ratings, as the result of a series of events that have sapped the

Sidney Blumenthal: Revolt of the generals

[Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars.] The analogy between Iraq and Vietnam has proved to be most compelling to the generals who planned and conducted the Iraq invasion. They kept to themselves their profound disquiet about the rapid rejection of the original plan for invasion that took 10 years to develop, the inadequate downsized force, the absence of preparation for the occupation, and the disastrous decision to disba

Sarah Hines: America's Last Guest Worker Program ... The Bracero Program: 1942-1964

[Sarah Hines lives in Los Angeles and writes for the Socialist Worker.] Millions of people have taken to the streets in immigrant-rights protests mostly focused against vicious legislation passed by the U.S. House that would criminalize undocumented workers and anyone who assists them. But the "compromise" proposal in the Senate falls far short of justice. Among the provisions of the propoal by Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy is a guest-worker program that w

Max Boot: A general disgrace

THE AMERICAN officer corps tried to blame the fall of Saigon on their civilian masters. If not for political restrictions — in particular, no invasion of North Vietnam — the U.S. would have won the war. So argued the late Col. Harry Summers in his celebrated 1981 book, "On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context." That was, at best, a gross oversimplification. As then-Maj. Andrew Krepinevich showed in "The Army and Vietnam" (1986), the U.S. defeat could be attribut

Verlyn Klinkenborg: The Future of Journalism as Told by Hilaire Belloc in 1918

... No newspaper, or TV network, of our own day can stand in for Lord Northcliffe's dominant suite of newspapers, including The Times of London, which embodied Belloc's notion of the Official Press. The balance of power has shifted, and many of the ideals implicit in the free or independent press, as Belloc describes it, have been absorbed by modern newspapers. There is also no shortage of the small, independent journals of opinion that Belloc was championing. But "The Free Pr

Edward Rothstein: Conference at Yale Explores the Complicated Dance Between Strong Leadership and the Popular Will

Be careful what you wish for, particularly when it comes to politics. Wish for democratic elections, and you may get duly elected tyranny and terror. Wish for democratic debate, and you may get polarized parties and a divided electorate. Wish for democratic responsiveness and you may get opinion-poll leadership. Wish for statesmanship and you may get demagoguery. One temptation might be to wish for nothing in particular, but then who knows what might happen? The difficulty seems to

Humberto Fontova: Ted Kennedy's New Book Hails JFK's Cuba Policy

[Humberto Fontova is the author of "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," described as "absolutely devastating. An enlightening read you'll never forget" by David Limbaugh. David Horowitz says: "Humberto has performed a valuable service to the cause of decency and human freedom. Every American should read this book."] "In a forthcoming book, Senator Edward M. Kennedy invokes the leadership of his brothers during the Cuban missile crisis to launch a

James Ottavio Castagnera: Insults, 101

[Jim Castagnera is a Philadelphia attorney and author, who writes a weekly newspaper column, “Attorney at Large.”] Last week center-left rival Romano Prodi squeaked out a narrow win over incumbent Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Their election race was even closer in the insult category. Personally I think Prodi narrowly won there, too, when he remarked, “The prime minister clings to data the way a drunkard clings to lamp posts, not for illumination but to keep him st

Michiko Kakutani: The Ford Administration as a Dress Rehearsal for Today

The title of Barry Werth's compelling but somewhat cursory new book, "31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today," refers to the tumultuous period following President Richard M. Nixon's resignation — a period in which President Gerald R. Ford tried to stabilize a country reeling from Watergate, reach a decision about pardoning his disgraced predecessor and establish an administration of his own. Those 31 days and the ensuing months were a period in which some of the

David Brooks: Mr. Past Vs. Mr. Future

Mr. Past: Your big problem is you don't understand the limits of what governments can achieve. Before this whole Iraq thing, you should have read Elie Kedourie's essay on the British occupation in the 1920's. This isn't history repeating itself, it's the same unbroken pattern. Kedourie shows the whole history of Iraq is a story of "bloodshed, treason and rapine." He shows how Iraqi politics have always been marked by "murderous currents," "demonic hatreds,&

David Corn: Will 2008 be a replay of 1968?

[David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.] Last week , Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was giving a speech on "Women Leaders" before a crowd of thousands at Brown University when a fellow interrupted her and shoute

Max Boot: Fighting for citizenship

RECENTLY, I HAPPENED to read two of the best military memoirs ever published: "Bugles and a Tiger" and "The Road Past Mandalay." Both were written by John Masters, a British officer with a literary flair who joined the Indian army in 1934, participated in one of the last imperial campaigns on the Northwest Frontier, invaded Iraq to overthrow a pro-German dictator in 1941 and then led a commando brigade operating behind Japanese lines in Burma. His writing is suf

Larry Johnson: An Updated Plamegate Timeline

The frantic spinning by the White House and its crazy right-wing allies, including Michael Ledeen and Christopher Hitchens (a neo-righty), to explain why George Bush was in the middle of the effort to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson is failing on the facts. Ledeen and Hitchens insist that the reports that Iraq was trying to a

Todd Gitlin: Why the left is so determined to eat its own

[Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of "The Intellectuals and the Flag."] SECTS ARE ALWAYS in need of heretics to blame, expel and punish. First, fervor takes hold, then rigidity. Righteousness dictates uniformity. Dissent seems dangerous, even treasonous. The spirit hardens: You're either with us or with the evildoers. This is nowhere more true than on the left. I've been rediscovering

Michael Barone: Remembering the immigration act of 1965

I watched the Senate debate the immigration issue the last two weeks with a certain sense of déjà vu, for I can remember sitting in the Senate Gallery more than 40 years ago and watching Sen. Edward Kennedy floor manage what became the immigration act of 1965. It was the first major piece of legislation Sen. Kennedy managed, and he did a good job, though the debate was little noticed, coming after the rush of Great Society legislation enacted under the stern direction of President Lyndon Johnson

Dick Polman: It's not unusual for journalists to be assailed during wartime

... It's not unusual for journalists to be assailed during wartime - President John F. Kennedy tried to get New York Times correspondent David Halberstam ejected from Vietnam because of his downbeat dispatches; Vice President Spiro Agnew later skewered Vietnam-era reporters as "nattering nabobs of negativism" - but the attacks on the Iraq coverage may set new standards for both fervor and frequency. Fox News host Sean Hannity condemned what he called "a total and almo

Matthew B. Stannard: Journalism's current crisis

... Biased to the right? Biased to the left? Some academics suggest the Iraq war coverage wasn't so different from the way past wars have been covered. "The press treated the war at the beginning the way the press treated other wars at the beginning, and that was: There's nothing to discuss. We're off to war," said Theodore Glasser, of Stanford University's Graduate School of Journalism. "There was no debate among Democrats and Republicans (about the ex