Roundup: Media's Take

August 8, 2005

Democratic Protectionism Follows the Wrong-Headed Policies that Led to the Great Depression

Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, in the WSJ (March 22, 2004):The cruelest economic tragedy of modern times was the Great Depression, a disaster deepened and accelerated by the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs of 1930. They raised import duties to the highest level in American history, igniting a global trade war. In three years U.S. exports to Europe declined to $784 million from $2.3

August 8, 2005

David Broder: FDR Blatantly Invoked Pearl Harbor and WW II at the Time of HIS Re-Election Bid

David Broder, in the Wash Post (March 11, 2004): ... [I]s it, as supporters of John Kerry and other critics suggest, wrong for Republicans to convert the emotions of that national tragedy [9-11] into grist for a political campaign? To answer that question, I went back, with help from Washington Post researcher Brian Faler, to 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost three years after

August 8, 2005

Romania's Former Communist Spymaster Says the Soviets Taught Saddam and Others How to Hide WMD

An interview published in FrontpageMag.com (March1, 2004): Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service. In 1987 he published Red Horizons (Regnery Gateway), reprinted in 24 countries. In 1999 Mr. Pacepa authored The Black Book of the Securitate, reportedly an all time bestseller in Romania. He is now finishing

August 8, 2005

20 Years from Now, Gay Rights Will Be Taken for Granted

Andrea Georgsson, in the Houston Chronicle (Feb. 22, 2004): I've often wondered what it must feel like to be one of the bigots immortalized in civil rights-era photographs and news footage, sicking dogs on peaceful protesters, shouting and spitting at little children walking meekly into public school buildings -- all those nice housewives with bouffant hairdos vowing in response to reporters' q

August 8, 2005

Comparing Bush Quotes with Those of Other Presidents

Some of the quotes assembled by Maureen Farrell, in Buzzflash (Feb. 19, 2004): War "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." – John F. Kennedy, June, 1963"F*ck Saddam, we're taking him out!" -- George Bush, 2002Peace "What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana

August 8, 2005

Bush: Presidents Shouldn't Micromanage Wars

Christopher Marquis, in the NYT (Feb. 10, 2004):Poor Lyndon B. Johnson. More than three decades after he entered the history books by micromanaging the Vietnam War, President Bush on Sunday invoked his heavy-handedness as the essence of what to avoid on the battlefield. Mr. Bush did not name Johnson; he did not have to. The image of an ill-tempered and stressed president pori

August 8, 2005

How the Head Scarf Became a National Security Threat

Elaine Sciolino, in the NYT (Feb. 8, 2004):WHO would have thought a piece of cloth could threaten the stability of the French state?...Still, it is natural that France's government would pick the Islamic veil as a symbol of everything un-French and potentially dangerous about its Muslim population.Ever since 1789, images and symbols have been used and abused to educate the French people about the republican ideal and the conformity it

August 8, 2005

Was Bush a Deserter?

Spencer Ackerman, writing in the New Republic (subscribers only) (Feb. 9, 2004):It's true that Bush isn't a deserter in the narrow sense: He never abandoned his post under attack. But he came as close as one could to deserting the Texas Air National Guard. As The Boston Globe meticulously documented in 2000, Bush's Guard records indicate that he failed to perform a year of

August 8, 2005

What Paul Bremer Could Learn from the Pilgrims

Sarah Whalen, a teacher at Loyola University School of Law, writing in Arab News (Jan. 22, 2004):Is democracy delayed, democracy denied? In delaying truly democratic elections in Iraq, the US reveals how far removed it has become from its own democratic origins, which commenced not with the colonial revolution or its 1776 Declaration of Independence, but much earli

August 8, 2005

Daniel Ellsberg: History's Repeating Itself

Daniel Ellsberg, writing in the Guardian (Jan. 27, 2004): After 17 months observing pacification efforts in Vietnam as a state department official, I laid eyes upon an unmistakable enemy for the first time on New Year's Day in 1967. I was walking point with three members of a company from the US army's 25th Division, moving through tall rice, the water over our ankles, when we heard firing close beh

August 8, 2005

Was There a Connection Between Saddam and Al Qaeda?

From Frontpagemag.com (Jan. 28, 2004: Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Stephen F. Hayes, the staff writer at The Weekly Standard whose recent article, Case Closed, reported on the U.S. government's secret memo detailing the links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. FP: Welcome to Frontpage Interview Mr. Hayes. It’s a pleasure to have you with us. Let’

August 8, 2005

Comparing the U.S. Empire with Great Britain's

David Francis, staff writer, in the Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 14, 2004):How does the United States hegemony compare with the famed British Empire of the 19th and early 20th century? Niall Ferguson, a British historian now teaching at New York University's Stern School of Business, finds both similarities and differences:* At its peak, when the sun literally did not set on its empire, Britain accounted for 10 percent of tota

August 8, 2005

Iowa Caucuses: WhyThey Became Important

Todd Purdam, writing in the NYT (Jan. 19, 2004):On Jan. 19, 1976, the notion of the caucuses as a big event was such a novelty that the Iowa Democratic Party had raised $4,000 to help defray the caucus costs: selling tickets, at $10 a head and $1 a drink, so the public could watch the national reporters at work on election night..."Caucus" is

August 8, 2005

Michael F. Shaughnessy: Never Have So Few Tried to Teach So Many with So Few Resources

Michael F. Shaughnessy, at EducationNews.org (8-4-05): [The author teaches at Eastern New Mexico University, School of Education]Never, in the course of human events, have so many teachers, been asked to do so much, with so many different, diverse students, with so few resources, and so little support (with apologies to the original author, Winston Churchill).Never has a nation, attempted to educate so m

August 5, 2005

Matthew Continetti: John Roberts's Undergraduate Papers ... What They Show

Matthew Continetti, in the Weekly Standard (8-8-05): John Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in Long Beach, Indiana, but he spent much of his young adulthood--about six years--in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first as an undergraduate at Harvard College, then as a student at Harvard Law. Roberts matriculated at Harvard in the fall of 1973, graduated summa cum laude three years lat

August 5, 2005

Christopher Levenick: How the Culture Wars Have Changed Since the Scopes Trial

Christopher Levenick, in the WSJ (8-5-05): [Mr. Levenick is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ] ... If the issues at stake in the Scopes trial seem familiar, so too should the way they unfolded. As in any good culture-war campaign, much of the controversy was staged. The law that Scopes broke was a symbolic measure, signed by a governor who thought it would never be enforced. Indeed, its leading advocate thought it should have no penalty provision. S

August 5, 2005

Mohamad Bazzi: Insurgency Continues Targeting Civilians--Which Is Almost Unprecedented

Mohamad Bazzi, Middle East Correspondent, in Newsday (8-5-05):... while the guerrillas are skilled at modifying their military tactics, they seem indifferent to the political models of past insurgencies. Most successful rebellions in the past century shared two traits: They had widespread public support and a well-articulated political agenda, which usually

August 4, 2005

James Howard Kunstler: Globalization Is an Anomaly and Its Time Is Running Out

James Howard Kunstler, in the Guardian (8-4-05):[James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.]The big yammer these days in the United States is to the effect that globalisation is here to stay: it's wonderful, get used to it. The chief cheerleader for this point of view is Thomas Friedman, co

August 3, 2005

Jody Kolodzey: Ben Franklin, the Original Fabricator

Jody Kolodzey, at mediachannel.org (8-2-05):[Jody Kolodzey has worked for the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times. She is currently the Philadelphia Co-Chair of the National Writers Union and edits Danny Schechter's blog at NewsDissector.org.] ... Playing fast and loose with the fact

August 2, 2005

Bill Jamieson: Is the Calmness in the Markets an Accurate Barometer of World Conditions?

Bill Jamieson, in the Scotsman (8-1-05): IS THE world a riskier place? Like many who follow markets, I have been struck by the paradox between the nightly news agenda of terror and global instability and the relatively calm behaviour of financial markets."Cognitive dissonance" is the posh name for it. I seem to be feeling a lot of it lately. There appears to be rising geo -political risk (Islamic terrorism, high oil prices) and yet diminishing risk