Roundup: Media's Take

Elon James White: The N-Word Belongs in "Huckleberry Finn"

[Elon James White is the editor-in-chief at This Week in Blackness.] The Internet is on fire today with the news that the American classic "Huckleberry Finn" is being edited to censor the word "nigger." In order to make the book more palatable for a wider audience, Twain scholar Alan Gribben spearheaded the project to neuter one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever written. Many have cried censorship in the name of political correctness.

Pierre Haski: French Not to Blame for Ivory Coast Fiasco

[Pierre Haski is a former foreign correspondent for AFP and Libération, in Johannesburg, Jerusalem and Beijing, and a former deputy editor of the french daily Liberation. He's co-founder and CEO of the French independent news website Rue89.com.] Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast's outgoing president, is trying to portray his fight to stay in charge as the mother of all battles with France, the former colonial power. Jacques Vergès, the maverick lawyer now defending Gbagbo, came out of the

Stephen Kinzer: Tragic End to Iran's Pahlavi Dynasty

[Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent. His new book is Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future.] Down the street from my apartment in Boston's South End, a single gunshot shattered the pre-dawn darkness Tuesday. Police arrived to find a suicide. This doesn't happen any more often in the South End than anywhere else, and passers-by like me were left to imagine what tragedy lay behind it. Then came news of the man's identity. He was Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi, son of

R. Emmett Tyrrell: 52 Years Later, Fidel Keeps on Ticking

[R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His new book is "After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery" (Thomas Nelson, 2010).] This week marks the 52nd anniversary of Fidel Castro's arrival to his Cuban throne. I cannot wait to see how it will be solemnized. Will little children appear before Fidel throwing flowers? They better not throw them too hard. He is pretty frail. Wi

Mosharraf Zaidi: The Pakistani Assassin Was No Lee Harvey Oswald

[Mosharraf Zaidi has served as an advisor on international aid to Pakistan for the United Nations and European Union and writes a weekly column for Pakistan's the News. You can find more of his writing at www.mosharrafzaidi.com.] Salmaan Taseer's alleged murderer is a twenty-six-year-old security guard, named Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. Qadri was hired by the Punjab Constabulary in 2003 as an 18-year-old recruit. In 2008, he joined the &qu

Ashley Cruseturner: Incumbency Favors Obama in a Tight Race

Based primarily on the advantage of incumbency, President Obama remains a slight favorite to win a second term. Although the President endured a celebrated “shellacking” in the November midterms, the stinging repudiation has already receded from the front pages. Economic and political cycles ebb and flow. Over the course of 2010 the President appeared awkward, vulnerable, and in the midst of a steep decline in confidence. But politics is an extremely dynamic business. The humiliating defeat is

Richard Cohen: How Little the U.S. Knows of War

[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the WaPo.] I present you with a paradox. The U.S. Army that fought the Vietnam War was reviled, not spit upon (that's a myth) but not much admired, either. In contrast, the Army of Iraq and Afghanistan is embraced and praised. Yet one was an army of the people, draftees and such, and the other is an army of volunteers, strangers to most of us. What's happening here? The answer, I fear, is a cliche: Familiarity breeds contempt. That &quo

Roger Pilon: Congress Rediscovers the Constitution

[Mr. Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.] If the new Congress to be sworn in on Wednesday is the tea party's cardinal achievement so far, its most symbolic achievement will come on Thursday, when the first order of business in the House will be a reading, aloud, of the Constitution. That event alone will not bring us any closer to limited government. But it will help get a debate going that for too long has

H.D.S. Greenway: An Unlikely Exit from Afghanistan

[H.D.S. Greenway’s column appears regularly in the Globe.] This new year will mark the second decade of America’s war in Afghanistan — already longer than Russia’s war, and longer than any of the three the British fought in the previous two centuries trying to bend Afghanistan to their will. Following a catastrophic defeat during the first Afghan war 170 years ago, the British sent another army, calling it the “Army of Retribution.’’ We don’t label our war aims quite so

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: The Unexpected Return of 'Duck and Cover'

[Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee. He hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.com.] Sixty years ago, in 1951, Ray Maurer and Anthony Rizzo produced a film for the federal government's Civil Defense agency in response to Soviet nuclear tests. Featuring an animated turtle named Bert and real-life schoolchildren from New York, the film, Duck and Cover, became an icon of the Cold War, seen by many as evidence of th

Michael Lind: Let's Stop Pretending the Constitution is Sacred

[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."] Will conservatives restore America to constitutional government? The new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has promised not only to begin the new congressional session by reading the Constitution in its entirety, but also to require that every new piece of

Leon T. Hadar: Israel’s Post-American Future

[Leon T. Hadar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. A shorter version of this article was published in Haaretz.] “We cannot exist alone.” That is Israel’s national security axiom acknowledged by President Shimon Peres during an address in Jerusalem in November. “For our existence we need the friendship of the United States of America,” stressed the Israeli statesman, highlighting the geo-strategic reality. “It doesn’t sound easy, but this is the

Svetlana Babeva: The Long Shadow of Vladimir Putin

[Svetlana Babeva is the U.S. bureau chief of the Russian News and Information Agency (RIA Novosti).] Although President Dmitry Medvedev is still portrayed in Western circles as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s placeholder, fettered in his steps at the will of his “patron,” the accomplishments in the U.S.-Russian relationship this year look all too impressive. Foremost, Medvedev allayed Western concerns regarding Moscow’s ties with Tehran. Russia joined the Western consor

Bret Stephens: Egypt's Prison of Hate

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] Following the New Year's Eve massacre of a score of Coptic Christian worshippers outside a church in Alexandria, Egyptians are wasting no time fingering the likely culprit. "With careful consideration," observes commentator Ammar Ali Hassan in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, "the incident could lead to other interpretations, especially the application of the Zio

Alvin S. Felzenberg and Alexander B. Gray:

[Alvin S. Felzenberg, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and at Yale University, is the author of The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game. Alexander B. Gray studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and the war-studies department of King’s College, London.] ...As the deteriorating situation on the Korean peninsula reminds us, the security concern

Rich Lowry: Yes, the Greatest Country Ever

[Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.] When the likes of Marco Rubio, the new Republican senator from Florida, say this is the greatest country ever, sophisticated opinion-makers cluck and roll their eyes. What a noxious tea-party nostrum. How chauvinistic. What hubris. Yet, what other countries deserve this designation? For the sake of convenience, start at 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia ratified the modern system of nation-states. And grade on power, prosperi

Stephen M. Walt: Where Do Bad Ideas Come From?

[Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international affairs at Harvard University and a blogger at ForeignPolicy.com.] We would all like to think that humankind is getting smarter and wiser and that our past blunders won't be repeated. Bookshelves are filled with such reassuring pronouncements, from the sage advice offered by Richard Neustadt and Ernest May in Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers to the rosy forecasts of Matt Ridley's The

Elizabeth Dickinson: GDP: A Brief History

[Elizabeth Dickinson is assistant managing editor at Foreign Policy.] Out of the carnage of the Great Depression and World War II rose the idea of gross domestic product, or GDP: the ultimate measure of a country's overall welfare, a window into an economy's soul, the statistic to end all statistics. Its use spread rapidly, becoming the defining indicator of the last century. But in today's globalized world, it's increasingly apparent that this Nobel-winning metric is too narrow for

Zbigniew Brzezinski: How to Stay Friends With China

[Zbigniew Brzezinski was the national security adviser in the Carter administration.] THE visit by President Hu Jintao of China to Washington this month will be the most important top-level United States-Chinese encounter since Deng Xiaoping’s historic trip more than 30 years ago. It should therefore yield more than the usual boilerplate professions of mutual esteem. It should aim for a definition of the relationship between the two countries that does justice to the global promise

Editorial in the LA Times: Obama ... The Pragmatic President

As President Obama's second year in office comes to an end, a bitter battle is underway among Democrats over whether he has broken his promises and sold out his principles, or merely made the kind of rational compromises that prudent leaders are required to make. Hurt, betrayed and surprised, some of his original supporters are now deriding him as spineless and weak, while others insist that his tactics allowed him to achieve all he possibly could have in today's partisan political environment.