Roundup: Media's Take

Morton Mintz: Ten Questions for Harriet Miers

Senate Judiciary Committee members have the opportunity to ask Harriet Miers, President Bush's nominee to succeed Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, certain bedrock but nervous-making questions that they did not ask--or were perhaps too timid to ask--of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. at the hearings on his nomination to be Chief Justice of the United States. The questions spring from a conveniently forgotten 1978 Supreme Court ruling and from the declaration in the Fourteenth Amendment

Max Boot: Why China Should Worry Us

... China, with a population of 1.3 billion people, is the world's most populous country. It also has the world's biggest, if far from the best, armed forces, with over 2.2 million personnel in its active-duty ranks (800,000 more than the United States), as well as the world's second-largest--and fastest-growing--defense budget. Its underlying economic power is rapidly expanding, too. Although most Chinese people remain poor (average per capita income, at $5,600, is lower than in the Dominican R

Ivan Eland: Cheney’s Counterproductive Policy Toward Terrorists

[Ivan Eland is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Director of the Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty, and author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.] In a recent speech before the usual friendly audience, hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney opined that U.S. failure to resolutely avenge anti-U.S. terrorist attacks during the 1980s and 1990s led to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Jack Naudi: Natural Catastrophes Could Hurt Economy

A powerful earthquake rocked San Francisco nearly a century ago, leveling thousands of houses and businesses. It was a natural catastrophe unlike any other up to that point. Yet the Dow Jones industrial average, created a decade earlier, barely budged. At least not then. But some financial historians say the earthquake had a devastating effect on the U.S. stock market over the next two years, and they warn of a repeat now. With Hurricane Katrina ripping a s

James Rosen: Cronyism's Roots Go Deep In U.S. History

The fading furor over former FEMA chief Michael Brown and the fresh consternation over President Bush's Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers have reignited an age-old American debate over cronyism in the White House. Brown and Miers join a long and colorful line of presidential pals extending far back in U.S. history - to the constitutional framers who tried to guard against presidents giving friends or relatives cushy jobs by requiring Senate confirmation of "principle of

Peter Pae: New Orleans' Rebuilding May Change City's Ethnicity/Race Composition

Most of the signs are handwritten and simply worded, such as "Workers Wanted" or "Need 50 Laborers Now!" Word has gotten out and each morning day laborers -- who come from Central America and Mexico by way of California, Texas and Arizona -- gather on street corners in the Kenner and Metairie neighborhoods on the western edge of the city. Lured by jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour, the Spanish-speaking day laborers have flooded into New Orleans to haul

Duncan Campbell: EU Translation Industry Enormous

On the table of Charles Briffa's study in the University of Malta is a copy of Poter u Glorja by Graham Greene. The Power and the Glory, to give it its English title, is one of many translations from English into Maltese by Dr Briffa but now he believes that the language spoken by the 400,000 islanders has been given a new lease of life that could lead to translation going in the opposite direction. The EU enlargement last year increased its official languages from 11 t

Keith Suter: The Age Of Oil

As petrol prices remain sky-high, KEITH SUTER reports on a prophet of doom's early warning Is today's high price of oil proof of a warning given half a century ago that the world would start to run out of oil by this time? The warning, by American scientist Dr Marion King Hubbert, was largely ignored at the time, but now, 16 years after his death, it's attracting much interest. Historians looking back over the past 150 years will call this the Age of Oil. Oil meets 40 p

Neal Gabler: Ed Murrow's Real Legacy

[Neal Gabler, the author of "Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity," is writing a biography of Walt Disney.] EVEN now, 40 years after his death, Edward R. Murrow remains the gold standard of American journalism - "the patron saint of my profession," as the radio host Bob Edwards called him in a biography last year. Murrow's vivid reports from wartime Europe for CBS radio brought unprecedented eloquence and immediacy to the medium. His documentaries

Kitty Kelly: Bush's Veil Over History

SECRECY has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly

William Langewiesche: The Wrath of Khan, Father of Pakistan's Islamic Bomb

[William Langewiesche is a national correspondent for The Atlantic.] ...He has aged considerably, and has lost weight and sickened, but apparently he is not being poisoned. After decades of soft living he suffers from various physical ailments, including constipation and, more significant, chronic high blood pressure, which led last summer to a brief hospitalization. He is also deeply despondent—convinced that he served his nation honorably, and that even as he transferred

James Morris: Parallels Between Niger And Irish Famines

[James T Morris is the executive director of the UN World Food Programme.] Niger demonstrated that too sharp a focus on market liberalisation and poverty reduction does not always help the hungry, writes James Morris When pictures of wide-eyed and emaciated African children from Niger began stalking our television screens in July and August this year, the Irish Government and public responded as they have done many times before. Generously. If any European

Gillian Tett: The World Is Littered With Descendents Of The Ultra Rich

Today's billionaires should take note. My mother's ancestors were comfortable, not mega-rich, but their story underlines the fact that financial success can prove much more transitory than the wealthy might ever believe. In fact, a notable minority of families that start with great privilege squander their wealth over time. This does not just occur in countries, such as the US, which are supposed to have made a virtue of social mobility (though this has always been more of a myth th

Emma Jacobs: Reality TV Has Paved Way For 19th Century Freak Show Return

I might go to a freak show today. With my little brother - he's nearly four. If I can prize him away from the Zodiac Jets, Gallopers and candyfloss he might enjoy Garry Stretch, the man with the stretchiest skin in the world, and Demon Dan,the self-labelled dwarfwho opens beer bottles with his eyes. At least that's what Joby Carter hopes we'll do this weekend. The boss of Carter's Steam Fair is convinced that families are ready for an old-fashioned side show. So this weekend, Carter

Mike Davis: Has the Age of Chaos Begun?

[Mike Davis is the author of many books including City of Quartz, Dead Cities and Other Tales, and the just published Monster at Our Door, The Global Threat of Avian Flu (The New Press) as well as the forthcoming Planet of Slums (Verso).] The genesis of two category-five hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) in a row over the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented and troubling occurrence. But for most tropical meteorologists the truly astonishing "storm of the decade" took place in M

Jonathan Alter: Tom DeLay's House of Shame

A decade ago, I paid a call on Tom DeLay in his ornate office in the Capitol. I had heard a rumor about him that I figured could not possibly be true. The rumor was that after the GOP took control of the House that year, DeLay had begun keeping a little black book with the names of Washington lobbyists who wanted to come see him. If the lobbyists were not Republicans and contributors to his power base, they didn't get into "the people's House." DeLay not only confirmed the story, he sh

Leslie Gelb and Anne-Marie Slaughter: Next Time Let's Have Congress Declare War

[Leslie H. Gelb is the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Anne-Marie Slaughter is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs.] ... Time and again in recent decades the United States has made military commitments after little real debate, with hazy goals and no appetite for the inevitable setbacks. Bill Clinton, having inherited a mission in Somalia to feed the starving, ended up hunting tribal leaders and trying to nation-build. Ro

Peggy Noonan: What Was Bush Thinking When He Nominated Miers?

Barring a withdrawal of her nomination, it's going to come down to Harriet Miers's ability to argue her own case before the Senate Judiciary Committee. If the American people decide she seems like a good person--sympathetic, wise, even-keeled, knowledgeable--she'll be in; and if not, not. What everyone forgets about the case of Robert Bork in his confirmation hearings is that regular people watched him, listened to the workings of his fabulous and exotic mind, saw the intensity, the

Anatol Lieven: There is no 'New Deal' in today's America

[The writer is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism.] The next few months in the US may indicate the answer to a central question of American life today: whether the present system is capable of serious reform. If the recent combination of natural and man-made disasters does not stimulate debate on such reform, then the future looks bleak indeed. The issue is not whether su

Patrik Jonsson: Scattering of New Orleans' Musicians May Inspire New Music

In one of the few bright spots after Katrina, an outpouring of support for displaced New Orleans musicians is energizing music scenes from Atlanta to Portland, Ore. Indeed, the superstorm has sparked one of the most extraordinary musical migrations of pickers, horn-blowers, and pluckers since the closing of New Orleans' Storyville bordello district in 1917 - an exodus of musicians that spread the jazz gospel and changed music history. "Economics and social patterns gave birth t