Roundup: Media's Take

January 23, 2004

On the 31st Anniversary of Roe v Wade

Joanne Mariner, writing in findlaw.com (Jan. 21, 2004):Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court opinion whose thirty-first anniversary falls on January 22, was not yet a decade old when I became pregnant. I was seventeen, living on my own, and the pregnancy was unwanted....Even though, as the Supreme Court said in 1992, "an entire generation has come of age free to assume Ro

January 23, 2004

India and Pakistan Make-Up: Is It for Real, this Time?

Shashi Tharoor, author of Nehru: The Invention of India, writing in the LAT about the recent warming of relations between India and Pakistan (Jan. 14, 2004): In reality, history has not always been as grim as the pessimists believe. Muslims and Hindus (as well as followers of other creeds) have shared the same civilizational space on the subcontinent for more than

January 23, 2004

Kiss-and-Tell Books Are an Old Washington Tradition

Linda Feldmann, staff writer, in the Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 14, 2004): It is a Washington ritual as tried and true as the filibuster and the leaked memo: a highly placed official, current or former, tells all in a book-length indictment of administration policy and operations. The latest has just hit the bookstores, a kiss-and-tell volume called "The Price of Loyalty," by reporter Ron Suskind, featuring the incendiary obser

January 23, 2004

MLK's Civil Liberties Struggle Relevant Today

Mark Engler, commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus, in Newsday (Jan. 14, 2004): Given his current status as a national icon, it is easy to forget that the government once tracked Martin Luther King Jr. like a criminal. In light of the present administration's war on terror, it's important to remember that everyone's constitutional rights must be safeguarded from the abuse of power. In the 1960s, the FBI set wiretaps in the civil rights leader's home, his

January 23, 2004

John Kerry's Story Told by Douglas Brinkley

Bob Minzesheimer, writing in USA Today (Jan. 15, 2004): If the Democratic presidential race were judged by literary standards, John Kerry would not be lagging in the polls. The Massachusetts senator is treated heroically in historian Douglas Brinkley's book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (William Morrow, $ 25.95). Of the new books by or about the candidates, it's the most dramatic and revealing.Not a typical campaign

January 23, 2004

Tell-All Books--A Short History

Johanna Neuman, staff writer, in the LAT (Jan. 16, 2004):The nation's capital was in a tizzy. The memoirs of the former administration official were flying off the shelves. The White House charged betrayal. The pundits were running out of synonyms for "juicy." Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, you might think. Try again. The year was 1988 and the public figure was Donald T. Regan, who had been fired as White House chief

January 23, 2004

My African Bride Never Heard of Kwanzaa

Malcolm A. Kline, writing for Accuracy in Academia (Dec. 2003): The Kwanzaa controversy somehow bypassed me, until my African bride forced me to evaluate it. My wife can trace her ancestry directly to Shaka, who reigned over much of sub-Saharan Africa until defeated by the combination of the most powerful European armies at the turn of the last century and tribal leaders who had grown disenchanted with the Zulu king

January 23, 2004

Dictators Now Facing Justice

Samson Mulugeta, writing in Newsday (Dec. 29, 2003): For decades, former dictators' career paths have tended to lead to luxurious retirements, untroubled by trial or punishment. With his arrest this month, though, Iraq 's Saddam Hussein joins a small but growing group: former despots facing justice. The trend is a new one. Uganda 's Idi Amin had an opulent life of exile in Saudi Arabia for decades until he died in August. Amin's successor, Milton Obote,

January 23, 2004

The Terrorists Are Losing the War

Con Coughlin, writing in the Sunday Telegraph (London) (Dec. 28, 2003): We are winning the war on terror. To some this statement might appear somewhat rash in view of how 2003 is drawing to a close. French flights to America cancelled because of a potential threat by al-Qaeda; a failed assassination attempt (the second this month) against President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan ; and yet more US troops killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq . But just because

January 23, 2004

Howard Dean's Misty-Eyed View of the 1960s

Paul Farhi, writing in the Washington Post (Dec. 28, 2003): Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has a vision of where he'd like to take the nation. It turns out to be the 1960s. In campaign stop after campaign stop, in overheated high school gyms and smoky union halls, Dean repeatedly offers this misty-eyed homage to that turbulent decade: "When I was 21 years old," he says, "it was the end of the civil rights era, and

January 23, 2004

Iowa Caucuses: Why We Never Know How Many Votes Candidates Received

William Saletan and Matt Schiller, writing in Slate (Jan. 16, 2004):More than 100,000 Democrats will go to precinct caucuses to select a nominee for president. Which candidate will get the most votes that night? If the race remains close, you'll never know.... Every viable group gets at least one delegate. The bigger your group, the more delegates you can earn. But there are two catches. First, t

January 23, 2004

Neil Bush: Embarrassment to Two Presidents

Peter Carlson, writing in the Washington Post (Dec. 28, 2003): Ah, it's nice to be Neil Bush. When you're Neil Bush, rich people from all over the world are eager to invest money in your businesses, even though your businesses have a history of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion. When you're Neil Bush, you'll be sitting in a hotel room in Thailand or

January 23, 2004

Forgotten History: The Clinton Administration Found Ties Between Iraq and Al Qaeda

Stephen F. Hayes, writing in the Weekly Standard (Dec. 29, 2003-Jan. 5, 2003): ARE AL QAEDA'S links to Saddam Hussein's Iraq just a fantasy of the Bush administration? Hardly. The Clinton administration also warned the American public about those ties and defended its response to al Qaeda terror by citing an Iraqi connection. For nearly two years, starting in 1996,

January 23, 2004

The Loss of the Citadel in Bam Is Tragic

Borzou Daragahi, writing in Newsday (Dec. 30, 2003): Painstakingly restored and maintained by successive Iranian governments since 1958, the citadel at Bam was one of the most important archaeological sites in Iran and a popular tourist attraction. Its collapse in a powerful earthquake Friday dismayed archaeologists and conservation specialists, in particular. "It's a cultural catastrophe," said Iraj Afshar Sistani, a Tehran historia

January 23, 2004

No Head Scarves in French Schools? "But Of Course!"

Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, writing in the Toronto Star (Dec. 26, 2003): A recent editorial in one of Canada's leading papers condemned the French decision to ban religious symbols from public schools as an attempt at "social engineering." It's a strange argument, given that most of France's history is one vast experiment in social engineering - and looking at modern France today, one could hardly say it's been a failure. As fellows of th

January 23, 2004

Is the New Wall Israel's Building Like the Notorious Walls in History

Debra Schifrin, reporting on NPR about the history of walls (Dec. 30, 2003): In the first century AD, the Roman emperor Hadrian built a massive stone wall dividing England and Scotland . British archaeologist Nick Hodgson says Hadrian built the wall to keep marauding bands in the north out of the Roman province of England . Mr. NICK HODGSON (British Archaeologist): If the wall had not been there, such groups would have been able to penetrate the province very, v

January 23, 2004

Brown & Root: A Company with a History

John Burnett, reporting for NPR about the history of Kellogg, Brown & Root, the construction company at the center of controversy in Iraq (Dec. 24, 2003): I'm standing here below Mansfield Dam, 12 miles west of Austin in the Texas hill country. This massive concrete structure holds back 370 billion gallons of water above the Colorado River . The dam was constructed by the Brown brothers, Herman and George, between 1937 and 1941. It is the breakout project that transform

January 23, 2004

An Interview with Spaniard, Pilar Rahola, Leftist Defender of Israel

An interview with Pilar Rahola, featured on PageMagazine.com:A Catalan from Barcelona, Pilar Rahola is a highly colorful figure on the Spanish scene. She is known for her feminism, as well as for her frank and direct manner. A former parliamentarian, Pilar Rahola sat in the national legislature in Madrid for eight years, first as part of the republican left, then as the founder of the Independence Party. However, she decided to leave political life just over a year ago to d

January 23, 2004

We Made Mistakes in Germany and Japan, too

Steven Weisman, writing in the NYT (Jan. 18, 2004):The American occupation in Iraq has been one of relentless trial and error.... Yet all these examples may not be so different from what has happened throughout American history, especially as administrations have sought to wage war or confront grave crises."It's nice to think that when there is a challenge, the United States goes in with a well-formulated plan and sticks to it,&qu

January 23, 2004

Don't Judge Bush So Fast Just Because of What You Read in Secretary O'Neill's Book

Robert Samuelson, writing in the Washington Post (Jan. 20, 2004): In 1962 Emmet John Hughes published a memoir of the Eisenhower presidency called "The Ordeal of Power." Hughes, a prominent journalist who had served Eisenhower as a speechwriter, admired the president as a person and for his role as the commanding general in Europe during World War II. Still, the portrait of Eisenhower was unflattering because it depicted a leader ill-suited for the White