Roundup: Media's Take

Harold Meyerson: The Return Of Jack Kempism

The president has spoken, and it’s now clear that one of the things Hurricane Katrina washed up from the deep was Jack Kempism. Jack Kempism is the way the Republican Party has dealt with issues of race and poverty since the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. By definition, the Republican Party since the start of the Reagan presidency doesn’t want to deal with issues of race and poverty, so most of the time Jack Kempism is an ideology on the shelf. Its only fair-weather proponent

Wynton C. Hall : Hillary’s Sister Souljah

[ Wynton C. Hall is the co-author (with Dick Wirthlin) of The Greatest Communicator: What Ronald Reagan Taught Me about Politics, Leadership, and Life. He is currently co-authoring (with Caspar Weinberger) Home of the Brave: Remembering the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror.] ...In 1985, pollster Stanley Greenberg — a Harvard Ph.D. who taught Marxist theory at Yale and is also the husband of liberal Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut — was asked by the Democratic

Daniel Glover: Policy Storms of the Century

Meteorologically speaking, the hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast on August 29 died days later in the northern part of the continent. Politically speaking, Katrina is very much alive, and its eye has settled over Washington for the foreseeable future. Shortly after the storm, Congress cleared two emergency spending bills totaling more than $60 billion. And lawmakers, as is typical, are also trying to make sure that their pet policy ideas ride the hurricane-induced legislative wa

Waleed Ziad : Jihad's Fresh Face

[Waleed Ziad is an economic consultant and aprincipal in the Truman National Security Project.] ... as we look at the causes of anti-Western jihadism, we tend to overlook one major contributing factor: the absence not just of democracy but also of grass-roots representative institutions like a free press and independent political, cultural and social-welfare institutions. Today's jihadists - I call them "neo-fundamentalists," because they are a world apart fr

Paul Krugman: Not the New Deal

It's possible to spend large sums honestly, as Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated in the 1930's. F.D.R. presided over a huge expansion of federal spending, including a lot of discretionary spending by the Works Progress Administration. Yet the image of public relief, widely regarded as corrupt before the New Deal, actually improved markedly. How did that happen? The answer is that the New Deal made almost a fetish out of policing its own programs against potential corruption. In pa

Bill Adair: Roberts Bears Striking Similarities To Rehnquist

Chief Justice Roberts may not be much different from Chief Justice Rehnquist. The testimony of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. over the past four days reveals many similarities with William Rehnquist, the judge Roberts would replace. Roberts, who clerked for Rehnquist and considers him a mentor, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that he shared the belief of his late boss that judges should have a limited role and "an appropriate modesty and hu

Mark Turner: UN Reflects On Genocide, Potential Future Interventions

In coming years, as historians reflect upon what was achieved at this week's United Nations summit in New York, one decision may stand out. If all goes as planned, the world will vow today "to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity". This promise, part of a new doctrin

Gail Russell Chaddock: Roberts Survives Grilling, Dems Turn To Swing Seat

After four days in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, John Roberts appears headed for confirmation as the 17th chief justice of the United States, even as Democrats and outside groups gear up for the next, even more critical, fight. Steady and nuanced - with flashes of dry wit - Judge Roberts held a consistent line through more than 20 hours of questioning: He supports the rule of law. He will decide issues in light of the court's precedents and facts of the case, with an open

Charlie Savage: Pressed On Compassion, Court Nominee Roberts Defers To Law

Senate Democrats challenged Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. all week to promise that he would look beyond abstract legal questions to the human circumstances of those who would be affected by his rulings. Again and again, Roberts declined to say what they wanted to hear. ... Reflecting on the four days of hearings that ended yesterday, liberals and conservatives came to opposite interpretations of Roberts's answers about compassion. For his skeptics on the le

Brian Golden: Can Iraq Support Democracy?

In April, I flew over Baghdad in a Blackhawk helicopter for the first time, and hope was not something I thought much about. A mere hundred feet above the city, I watched women cloaked in black scurry through the streets with their children. The narrow neighborhood routes to their homes were dingy with trash, crumbling buildings, and the carcasses of exploded vehicles. My trips through Baghdad, by ground and air, became frequent, but hope became a word of concrete relevance. Two w

Cory Robin: The Fear of the Liberals

[Robin is author of Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford), and teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.] It's the fourth anniversary of September 11, and Americans are getting restless about the war in Iraq. Republicans are challenging the President, activists and bloggers are pressing the Democrats and liberal hawks are reconsidering their support for the war. Everyone, it seems, is asking questions.

Rebecca Solnit: The Uses of Disaster

At stake in stories of disaster is what version of human nature we will accept, and at stake in that choice is how will we govern, and how we will cope with future disasters. By now, more than a week after New Orleans has been destroyed, we have heard the stories of poor, mostly black people who were “out of control.” We were told of “riots” and babies being murdered, of instances of cannibalism. And we were provided an image of authority, of control—of power as a necessary counter not to threat

Richard Cohen: What Responsibility?

Following the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, John F. Kennedy took full responsibility for the debacle. "I am the responsible officer," the president said. Similarly, in 1983, Ronald Reagan said "I accept responsibility" for the catastrophic terrorist attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. Now, as if in the grand tradition of presidents affirming that the buck stops where Truman said it did -- the Oval Office -- George Bush has taken responsibility for the sho

Dan Froomkin: Hurricane George

After two weeks of being battered for ignoring a drowning city in the wake of a hurricane, the Bush White House is trying to get back into the business it knows best: Making its own weather. President Bush was famously on vacation when the disaster hit. He and his hurriedly reconstituted staff of political operatives floundered for a while, reflexively pursuing the time-honored White House strategy of admitting no mistakes -- and sticking to it, even after it was clear that the nati

Linda Greenhouse: Roberts Says Much but Gives Away Little

For those senators who were busy excavating his past for hints of his future, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. had a history lesson of his own to offer on his first day under questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee.Judge Roberts, who formerly worked in the Justice Department and has now been nominated to be chief justice, invoked the memory of a man who more than 60 years ago made a similar journey between two branches of government and who shed some of his earlier views in the process.

Max Boot: Just following orders in China

IMAGINE WHAT would have happened if during the 1980s an American communications company had provided information that allowed the South African government to track down and imprison an anti-apartheid activist. That is pretty much the moral equivalent of what Yahoo has just done in China in the case of journalist Shi Tao. And the California-based Web giant deserves the same kind of public opprobrium that would have fallen on any Western firm that dared to publicly cooperate with the enforcers of

David J. Lynch: U.S.-Chinese Trade In Perspective

What started as a bad pun has become one of the most consequential questions facing the United States: "Who is Hu?" Is Chinese President Hu Jintao the valued customer Corporate America fancies or, as a growing segment of official Washington fears, is he the USA's most dangerous long-term enemy? Financial links between the USA -- the world's most powerful country -- and China -- its most populous one -- have never been more crucial. Bilateral trade is running a

Julian Borger Washington: On Roberts' Nomination And His Prospects

A battle began in the US Senate yesterday over the nomination of John Roberts as the next chief justice of the United States, an appointment that could set the supreme court's tone for more than a generation. Mr Roberts, a conservative appeals court judge and President Bush's choice, is expected to be confirmed barring any shock developments in the course of the hearings. Even his critics admit he has excellent professional credentials, an affable personality, and no bombshell decis

Harvey Wasserman: Bush The War Flop

Today marks four years that George W. Bush has been a complete flop as a “War President,” the worst Commander in Chief in US History. On September 11, 2001, Bush’s incompetence -- at very least -- allowed Osama bin Laden’s attacks on America to happen. Imagine the howl from the bloviating right wing if those disasters had happened on Bill Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry’s watch. Since then, Bush’s four-year mismanagement of military operations has been every bit as inc

Tom McGough: Rehnquist Leaves An Enormous Judicial Legacy

My turn to stand vigil came at 11 on Tuesday morning, an hour after the flag-draped coffin of William Hubbs Rehnquist had been carried into the Great Hall of the Supreme Court and placed for public viewing on the same velvet-covered platform that had once borne the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. At the head of the platform stood a portrait of the man who had presided over the judicial branch of our federal system for the last 19 years. Standing vigil meant standing silent and stock stil