Roundup: Media's Take

July 29, 2005

Juan Cole et al: An Exchange About the Middle East in the Wake of the Iraq War

From the Nation (7-18-05): With its war in Iraq and its talk of promoting democracy, the Bush Administration has begun to transform the Middle East--but not always in ways it may have intended. We have asked four leading experts on the Middle East to offer their assessments of the consequences of the Administration's policies for the region and for America's standing within it. The four are: Helena Cobban, who write

July 29, 2005

Bruce Shapiro: Why Democrats Should Fight the Nomination of John Roberts

Bruce Shapiro, in the Nation (7-28-05): Is Judge John Roberts worth a fight? That's the question Senate Democrats and civil rights lobbyists were asking as the amiable nominee made his let's-get-acquainted rounds on Capitol Hill. To put it bluntly: With Judge Roberts's reputation as a skilled and unimpeachable Supreme Court litigator, with his long bipartisan list of Washington friends, with George W. Bush

July 28, 2005

Normon Solomon: Tom Friedman ... The Liberal Who Seems Indifferent to the Consequencesof War

Normon Solomon, in his Media Beat column (7-28-05): The acclaimed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has often voiced enthusiasm for violent destruction by the U.S. government. Hidden in plain sight, his glee about such carnage is worth pondering. Many people view Friedman as notably articulate, while others find him overly glib, but there’s no doubt that he is an influential commentator with inherently respectable views. When Friedman makes his case for

July 28, 2005

Morton Mintz: The Senate Should Ask John Roberts If He Thinks Corporations Are Persons Under the 14th Amendment

Morton Mintz, at the website of Nieman Watchdog (7-27-05): [Morton Mintz (Nieman '64) and a Washington Post reporter for decades, is a senior adviser to the Nieman Watchdog project.] Judge Robert H. Bork, President Reagan's failed Supreme Court nominee, famously denounced Roe v. Wade as "a wholly unjustified usurpation of state legislative authority." For the moment, at least, let's assume he was correct. T

July 27, 2005

Max Boot: Support for Islamist Terrorists Is Declining

Max Boot, in the LAT (7-27-05): We interrupt the latest reports about terrorist atrocities with a news bulletin: Support for suicide bombings and Islamic extremism, along with hatred of the Great Satan, is actually waning in the Muslim world. If that comes as a surprise, it's because of the old adage that good news is no news. While the increase of anti-Americanis

July 26, 2005

Akhil Reed Amar: What Constitutes Fair Play in the Nominations Process

Akhil Reed Amar, in the Wasington Post (7-5-05): [The writer teaches constitutional law at Yale University and is the author of the forthcoming book "America's Constitution: A Biography."]The formal constitutional rules for appointing a justice to the Supreme Court seem simple enough: The president "nominates" a candidate and the Senate gives its "advice

July 26, 2005

James Ottavio Castagnera: An Open Letter to Liberals

James Ottavio Castagnera, in an article written for HNN (7-26-05): [Mr. Castagnera, a Philadelphia journalist and attorney, is the Associate Provost at Rider University and author of the weekly newspaper column “Attorney at Large.”] Let them have their chance. That’s my message in a nutshell. I’m speaking, of course, of the 51 percent of our nation who re-elected George Bush. I’m speaking, too, of the White House, the GOP-dominated C

July 25, 2005

Edwidge Danticat: America's Failed Experiment in Remaking Haiti

Edwidge Danticat, in the Miami Herald (7-25-05): [Edwidge Danticat, a native of Haiti, is the author of several novels, including, most recently, Anacaona, Golden Flower.] On July 28, 1915, U.S. forces invaded Haiti, launching an occupation that would last 19 years.The U.S. invasion came in the wake of President Woodrow Wilson's professed commitment to make the world safe for democracy. However, as soon a

July 21, 2005

Tom Engelhardt, Mark Danner, Michael Kinsley: The Downing Street Memo

Tom Engelhardt, at his blog, www.tomdispatch.com (7-19-05): [Mr. Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture and co-editor of History Wars, the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past.] On May 15, Tomdispatch posted a piece

July 21, 2005

Jules Witcover: Political Smears ... An Old Story in American History

Jules Witcover, in the Balt Sun (7-20-05):Are the Democrats smearing Karl Rove because he or somebody else in the White House smeared Joseph C. Wilson IV because he smeared President Bush over false claims that Iraq sought uranium fuel in Niger? The charges and countercharges over the leak that former Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Pla

July 21, 2005

Max Boot: China's Stealth War on the U.S.

Max Boot, in the LAT (7-20-05):Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu of the Chinese People's Liberation Army caused quite a stir last week when he threatened to nuke "hundreds" of American cities if the U.S. dared to interfere with a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan. This saber-rattling comes while China is building a lot of sabers. Although its defense budge

July 21, 2005

Norman Solomon: General Westmoreland’s Death Wish and the War in Iraq

Norman Solomon, in his Media Beat column (7-21-05): After he died on July 18, front pages focused on the failures of William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Overall, the coverage faulted him for being a big loser, not a mass killer. The Washington Post noted that Westmoreland “was called a war criminal.” But the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese people each week during his four years as the top American general in Vietnam counted for

July 19, 2005

James Pinkerton: Understand Terrorism? Ridiculous

James Pinkerton, in Newsday (7-19-05): The evasive reaction of many British Muslims to the July 7 bombings in London will strike Americans as depressingly familiar. In past decades, explosions of criminal violence in the U.S. were rationalized as the inevitable products of racism and poverty. The solution, Americans were told by their leaders, was more un

July 19, 2005

Nicholas D. Kristof: Remember the Pueblo

Nicholas D. Kristof, in the NYT (7-19-05): Moored on a river here in the North Korean capital is the U.S.S. Pueblo, described as an "armed spy ship of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces." The Pueblo is the Navy ship that North Korea seized in 1968 in waters off the country's east coast, setting off an international crisis. One American sailor was killed and 82 others were imprisoned for nearly a year and tortured into writing confessions. To signal that t

July 19, 2005

Martin E. Marty: Radical Islam in Europe

Martin E. Marty, in the newsletter of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School (7-18-05):The Islamic Center in Munich, started by ex-Nazis, is now the base of radical Islam in Germany.  Tens of thousands of Muslims in the Soviet Army switched sides to fight for Hitler.  They stayed to build up a community influenced by the fundamen

July 15, 2005

Max Boot: The BBC Still Refuses to Call the London Terrorists Terrorists?

Max Boot, in the LAT (7-14-05): The London bombings have occasioned many comparisons with the 1940 Blitz. This is usually cited as evidence of British fortitude — the attitude exemplified by cockneys in the heavily bombed East End who told Winston Churchill, "We can take it, but give it 'em back." That is indeed the dominant British (and

July 15, 2005

Clarence Page: The Memin Pinguin Controversy--And What We Could Learn from Mexico

Clarence Page, in the Baltimore Sun, writing about Mexico's decision to publish a stamp featuring the face of Memin Pinguin, the "big-lipped, big-eared, bug-eyed, black-skinned pickaninny cartoon character" (7-15-05): Some American editorialists have howled that Mexico has a lot to learn about racial sensitivity. Maybe so, but Norteamericanos have much to learn from Mexico's experience, too.On the positive side, today's Mexico did not emerge out of the burdensome rac

July 13, 2005

Harold Meyerson: Karl Rove's Comeuppance

Harold Meyerson, in the Wa Po (7-13-05): Now Karl Rove has become "fair game."That was the term that the president's consigliere applied to Valerie Plame, according to Newsweek, in a conversation with MSNBC's Chris Matthews immediately after the publication of Robert D. Novak's column that identified Plame as a CIA operative. And, of course, Plame was fa

July 13, 2005

Henry Mark Holzer: Justice O'Connor Was No Conservative on the Bench

Henry Mark Holzer, at frontpagemag.com (7-12-05): [Henry Mark Holzer is a Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn Law School, specializing in constitutional and appellate law. Author of five books and co-author of two, including Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, he regularly contributes to Frontpagemag.com.] Faced with a Supreme Court vacancy, a President whose paradigm for justices is Scalia and Thomas, a Republican majority in the Senate, the “exceptional circums

July 12, 2005

Frank Rich: Worse than Watergate

Frank Rich, in the NYT (7-10-05):WHEN John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in sha