Roundup: Media's Take

Cunning Realist (Blogger): The Dangers Posed by Speculative Bubbles

["A lifelong conservative with a strong independent streak, I am a late-30's resident of New York City and an executive in the financial industry. I have a B.A., and an M.B.A. in International Business from Columbia University."] Barry Ritholtz recently posted this chart showing the duration of bull and bear cycles in the stock market over the past century. One of the reasons this chart inter

Max Boot: The wiretaps shouldn't bug us

I CAN CERTAINLY understand the uproar over President Bush's flagrant abuses of civil liberties. This is America. What right does that fascist in the White House have to imprison Michael Moore, wiretap Nancy Pelosi and blackmail Howard Dean? Wait. You mean he hasn't done those things? All he's done is intercept communications between terrorists abroad and their contacts in the U.S. without a court order? Talk about defining impeachable offenses downward. If you want to s

Pete du Pont: Ben Franklin understood the need for secrecy in matters of national security

Has President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority or acted illegally in authorizing wiretaps without a warrant on calls between American citizens in the United States and people abroad who are, or are suspected of having ties to, terrorists? Benjamin Franklin (whose 300th birthday is today) would not have thought so. In 1776 he and his four colleagues on the Continental Congress's foreign affairs committee (called the Committee of Secret Correspondence) unanimously agreed tha

Alan Luxenberg: Spielberg's Munich and the Other Munich

[Alan Luxenberg is Director of the Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, a project of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He teaches at two religious schools on Sunday mornings and some weeknights.] As a Hebrew School teacher, I try to make use of popular culture to illuminate issues of Jewish concern, and I try to use current events to launch into explorations of history, both recent and ancient. Steven Spielberg’s Munich offers such a teaching opportunity.

Robert Jensen: MLK Day: Dreams and Nightmares

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books). He can be reached at: rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.] In Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, he had a dream. But in

Joe Conason: Alito's ugly association

It's easy to tell when conservatives feel most embarrassed by a particular political revelation because indignation immediately swells while memory grows dim. Whatever the outcome of Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination, his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton is the kind of issue that conservatives clearly prefer to avoid. They don't like to be reminded of their historical opposition to civil rights, their continuing hostility to the advancement of minorities, or th

Bruce Tyler Wick: Bush's Signing Statements Are Unconstitutional

[Bruce Tyler Wick is an Ohio attorney and registered parliamentarian, celebrating 30 years in private practice. He was apparently among the first to recognize--surely, the first to argue--the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT), and all of its remedies, apply to the US and all persons subject to its jurisdiction. He can be reached at brucetylerwick@sbcglobal.net.] Under the US Constitution, Congress is the lawgiver, not the presiden

Norman Solomon: Ted Koppel's Admiration for Kissinger Riases Doubts About His Suitability for NPR

[Norman Solomon’s latest book is “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.] No doubt many people are glad that Ted Koppel will become a regular voice on National Public Radio. He recently ended 25 years with ABC’s “Nightline” show amid profuse media accolades. But what kind of journalist goes out of his way to voice fervent admiration for Henry Kissinger?

Charles Krauthammer: 'Munich,' the Travesty

If Steven Spielberg had made a fictional movie about the psychological disintegration of a revenge assassin, that would have been fine. Instead, he decided to call this fiction "Munich" and root it in a historical event: the 1972 massacre by Palestinian terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games. Once you've done that -- evoked the killing of innocents who, but for Palestinian murderers, would today be not much older than Spielberg himself -- you have an obligation to get t

Anna Quindlen: Let's Allow Immigrants to Become President

... Our attitude toward immigrants is paradoxical. As Roger Daniels writes in his history "Guarding the Golden Door," most Americans find themselves "on the one hand reveling in the nation's immigrant past and on the other rejecting much of its immigrant present." They also find themselves reviling illegal immigration and yet benefiting from its underground work culture, the jobs that need doing that we don't want to do ourselves. But there's one potentially dirt

Michael Waldman: Reform Doesn't Always Follow Scandals Like Abramoff

[Mr. Waldman is executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.] ...In the long struggle to strengthen democracy, reform sometimes follows scandal, but not always. Often appalling corruption has produced a yawn rather than a shriek. True progress comes only from rare ''reform moments,'' when accumulated public outrage combines with potent policy changes. In the late 1800's, everybody knew that campaigns were financed by

Boardrooms Berated For A Half-Century

An aggressive, innovative investor takes on the obstinate boss of a big retailer; publicity campaigns are organised to win the hearts, minds and proxy votes of shareholders and employees; each side hurls a battery of accusations; and, of course, the trigger for the dispute is a stock that seems to be going nowhere. It sounds like the latest in a series of headline-grabbing instances of hedge-fund activism in Europe and the US in the past year. But this proxy battle - between Louis W

David Horowitz: What I Told Pennsylvania's Academic Freedom Hearings

Before I begin, I want to say that I am honored and grateful to the Committee for inviting me. These hearings are historic in their concern for the health of academic freedom on our college and university campuses, and I thank you for allowing me to participate. But I also want to express my concern about statements that have been made by some members of this Committee which raise a question as to whether those members are actually interested in what I and others who have come before this commit

George Melloan: There is hope that Israel's era of warfare is coming to a close

... The Arab-Israeli struggle might be equated -- at least in duration -- to the Hundred Years' War between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries. One could say it began in the early 20th century when Zionists began arriving in significant numbers in the Holy Lands, fleeing oppression in Europe. They augmented the Jewish population of what would later be called Palestine. Late in the 19th century, according to the most reliable studies, Jews were only about 10% of a popu

Jim Castagnera: Is the Mine Disaster’s “Back Story” Aesop’s Fable?

The “Back Story,” as the media like to call it, behind last week’s West Virginia mine disaster is how important coal has become to the world’s economy. A few facts that emerged amidst the tragedy and the tears tell the story. For instance, in Upshur County, where the Sago Mine explosion occurred, a coal miner can earn $55,000 a year. In the coal fields of West Virginia, as in the coal county I called home, those are pretty big bucks. The media reported median househol

Ivan Eland: An Imperial Presidency Based on Constitutional Quicksand

After revelations about President Bush ordering surveillance of Americans without obtaining warrants, the boundaries of executive power will undoubtedly be one of the principal issues raised at the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. The conservative Alito has publicly endorsed the theory of the unitary executive, which takes a broad view of presidential authority. Alito’s liberal critics say his record has been too obsequious to expanded executive power. The

Noah Feldman: Who Can Check the President?

Not since Watergate has the question of presidential power been as salient as it is today. The recent revelation that President George W. Bush ordered secret wiretaps in the United States without judicial approval has set off the latest round of arguments over what the president can and cannot do in the name of his office. Over the past few years, the war on terror has led to the use of executive orders to authorize renditions and the detention of enemy combatants without trial - for which the B

Martin Arnold: French Left Waits For A Second Mitterrand

"I will be the last of the great presidents . . . the last in the line of de Gaulle. After me, there will be no more in France." This was how Francois Mitterrand immodestly assessed the unpromising prospects for his successors as French president. As the country prepares to commemorate tomorrow the 10th anniversary of Mitterrand's death, most observers agree that in spite of his stature as a towering political figure on the domestic and European stage, France's longest-ser

Alan M. Field: Troubling Commercial-Historical Lessons About China

Can multinational companies confidently entrust the long-term future of their supply chains to a country founded on the Communist legacy of Mao Zedong? I asked myself that question recently while reading "Mao: The Unknown Story," a riveting biography of the Chinese leader that is still banned in China but is a runaway bestseller in Europe and Asia. Authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, both reputable historians, portray Mao as a craven, egomaniacal monster who had no genuin

Todd S. Purdum: The K Street Culture

IN 1872, some Republican elders, revolted by the rampant influence peddling of Ulysses S. Grant's administration, challenged him for re-election. "He has used the public service of the government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence," they complained, and "shown himself deplorably unequal to the task imposed on him by the necessities of the country." Jack Abramoff's trading room was his Signatures restaurant, not the front of the old Willard Hotel,