Roundup: Media's Take

Humberto Fontova: Cuba's Bailout

[Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com.] On April 13th President Obama lifted all restrictions on travel and remittances by family members to their kin in Cuba. Most Cuba-watchers see this as the first step towards a rapid dismantling of what little is left of the so-called "Cuban embargo." Here's a few things you're not hearing from the MSM regarding travel and remittances to Cuba. Until fairl

Jon Talton: Do Americans Support Capitalism, and Which Capitalism?

[Jon Talton is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times and proprietor of the blog Rogue Columnist. His latest book is the mystery novel Cactus Heart.] I’m being asked to participate in a debate on whether America’s economic system should remain capitalist or embrace socialism.Only in Seattle, right?Yet a new Rasmussen Poll found only 53 percent of respondents nationally

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: America sank these pirates, but the Age of Might is over

[Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a British journalist.] For the family of Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, his rescue by special forces was the best possible Easter present. For Americans it was an exhilarating display of American power, and for Barack Obama it was a gratifying demonstration that he isn't the wimpish pacifist the Republicans called him. But to a detached observer, this gung-ho adventure in the Indian Ocean is the rule-proving exception. What

Ronald Bailey: The morality of resurrecting our closest evolutionary cousins

[Ronald Bailey is the award-winning science correspondent for Reason magazine and Reason.com, where he writes a weekly science and technology column.] The ancestral lines of Neanderthals and modern humans split about 800,000 years ago, making them our closest relatives on the hominid family tree. Neanderthals inhabited ice age Europe and parts of the Middle East before going extinct 30,000 years ago. A team of researchers led by geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute in Lei

Drew Westen: Why the Democrats Are Losing Ground As Obama Is Gaining It

[Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."] While the President is off being the leader of the free world and trying to restore prosperity at home, someone needs to manage the blind trust of the Democratic Party before its assets dwindle like shares of Citigroup. President Obama's approval ratings have continued

E.J. Dionne: Christianity is struggling with itself, and that suggests it's on the path to rediscovering its true calling

[E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University.] ...Will Herberg wrote an important piece of religious sociology in 1955 called Protestant, Catholic, Jew. If he were here now, his book would have to be named Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Confucian. An

David Neiwert: Glenn Beck's 'Liberal Fascism Hour'

[Mr. Neiwert is the managing editor of crooksandliars.com and the author of The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.] Back early last year when I was busy critiquing Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, the question came up frequently: Why would I bother? Isn't it a problem to be treating a book of junk political philosophy like this with more respect than it deserves? Isn't flat

Terence Samuel: Polarization We Can Believe In

[Terence Samuel is deputy editor of the Root.] Even in politics, things are often exactly what they seem. So it should have been reasonable to dismiss as fiction recent reports that Barack Obama is the most polarizing president in recent history. There is nothing in our experience to support that; based on the president's personal favorability rating and his high job approval numbers, if this is polarization, it is the kind of polarization we want. Still, it was big new

NYT Editorial: End of the Clash of Civilizations

On his visit to Turkey last week, President Obama made important progress toward recalibrating America’s relations with the Islamic world. The president steered away from the poisonous post-9/11 clash of civilizations mythology that drove so much of President George W. Bush’s rhetoric and disastrous policy. He told Turkey’s Parliament that the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam” and promised that its relationship with the Muslim world will be founded on more

Damon Linker: The Future of Christian America

Book, magazine, and newspaper publishers love headlines announcing the "end" of this or that -- because they sell books, magazines, and newspapers. And so we have this week's issue of Newsweek, announcing "The Decline and Fall of Christian America" in red letters laid-out in the shape of a cross on a black background. Powerful. Dramatic. Exciting. Chilling. Inside, the

Greg Sheridan: Obama Continues Bush's Foreign Policy

[Greg Sheridan is the Australian's Foreign editor.] I suffer a certain ambiguity in my attitude to Obama. He is the President of the US and as such an enormous force for good in the world. He represents the continuity of overwhelmingly beneficial American policy. So at one level I am all for him. On the other hand, it is impossible not to be annoyed by the double standards that the Bush-hating media applies to him. Can you imagine the noise and fuss that would be made

Kimit Muston: Response to the AIG vp who thinks he's being swindled out of his bonus

[A freelance writer, for six years KAMuston wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Daily News and has been published by the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oklahoma Oklahomian, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is a regular contributor to the web site Daily Kos and Politico.com, and now lives in Indiana.] I suppose by now you have read the letter. I am referring to the note of resignation from Jake DeSantis, the Executive Vice President and sel

John Taylor: Nixon, Too, Might Have Junked "War On Terror"

[Mr. Taylor is the former executive director of the Nixon Center.] Is Peter Baker making fun of the Obama administration?:They may be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, much as Mr. Bush did to Iraq, but it is not a “surge.” They may still be holding people captured on the battlefield at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but they are no longer “enemy combatants.R

Humberto Fontova: Congressional Black Caucus Smitten With Castro

[Humberto Fontova is the author of 4 books including Fidel;Hollywoods' Favorite Tyrant and Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him.] Cuba's atrocious record on race was somehow overlooked by the Congressional Black Caucus. Last week the Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured the longest suffering black political prisoner in modern history (Eusebio Penalver) rolled out the red carpet for 6 smitten members of the CBC. All of these U.S. legislators met wi

Alan Abramowitz: The Transformation of the American Electorate

[Dr. Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and the author of Voice of the People: Elections and Voting Behavior in the United States (2004, McGraw-Hill). He can be contacted via email at polsaa@emory.edu.] The election of America's first black president has been widely hailed as an historic event. However, much less attention has been paid to the demographic trends which made that event poss

Alvaro Vargas Llosa: How a once-untouchable strongman, Fujimori, was brought low

[Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and the editor of "Lessons from the Poor."] Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison this week by Peru's Supreme Court in connection with two massacres committed by a death squad known as the Colina group, as well as the kidnapping of a journalist and a businessman. The precedent-setting trial, which international observers have said met high standards of due process,

Clayton M. Christensen: The Past and Future of General Motors

[Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups.] Washington has forced General Motors Chairman Rick Wagoner to resign as a condition of providing the next injection of capital that GM needs to get back on its feet. Finding a "sacrificial lamb" on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is

Stephen Morris: Obama is no Jimmy Carter

[Stephen Morris is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Washington.] BARACK Obama's European tour has been a public relations bonanza that has not yet reaped commensurate rewards in allied policies. Yet his speeches and answers to questions have revealed aspects of his foreign policy thinking that belie the original scepticism of many who feared his inexperience would result in the naivety and incoherence that plagued the Carter administration

Reuel Marc Gerecht: President Obama means well. Iran doesn't.

[Reuel Marc Gerecht is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.] In diplomacy and espionage, there is no worse mistake than "mirror-imaging," that is, ascribing to foreigners your own actions and views. For Westerners this is especially debilitating, given our modern proclivity to assume that others pursue their interests in secular, material, and guilt-ridden ways. Confession is an important part of the

Jeff Biggers: Where's the National Outrage on Blair Mountain? Gov. Joe Manchin and Bilbo Legacy.

[Jeff Biggers is the author of The United States of Appalachia.] When Walmart recently announced its intention to build a super-center near the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia, filmmaker Ken Burns and a host of Pulitzer Prize-winning historians denounced the move for its obvious offense to our national heritage site. We need that same outrage for another battlefield under assault. First, imagine if a thin seam of coal was found under the Wilderness Batt