Roundup: Media's Take

Quin Hillyer: Party Like It's 1995

[Quin Hillyer is a senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator.] National Democrats this year are bombarding wavering voters with overblown horror stories about how a Republican Congress will screw up in the same way the previous Republican Congresses did during the G.W. Bush administration. The better comparison would be with what the first Republican Congress in 40 years did in 1995, 1996, and 1997. Set aside some Gingrichian histrio

Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan: Preserving national treasures

[Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan are award-winning documentary filmmakers who collaborated on the PBS documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."] America's third national park, Yosemite, the home of spectacular waterfalls, silent groves of ancient trees and an unequaled alpine wilderness, celebrated its 120th birthday this month. The place John Muir considered "nature's temple" was arguably where the national park idea was born — a uniquely American idea

Coleen Rowley and Bogdan Dzakovic: WikiLeaks and 9/11: What If?

[Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for more than 20 years, was legal counsel to the FBI field office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. Bogdan Dzakovic was a special agent for the FAA's security division. He filed a formal whistle-blower disclosure against the FAA for ignoring the vulnerabilities documented by the Red Team. For the past nine years he has been relegated to entry-level staff work for the Transportation Security Administration.] If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, co

Robert Reich: Reading America's Tea Leaves

[Robert Reich was the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.] November 3, 2020. The newly formed Independence Party pulls enough votes away from both the Republican and Democratic candidates to give its own candidate, Margaret Jones, a plurality of votes, an Electoral College victory and the presidency. A significant number of Independence Party members have also taken seats away from Democrats and Republicans in Congress....

Michael Shifter: Rescued Relations

[Michael Shifter is president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.] It would be hard to imagine an odder couple than Sebastián Piñera and Evo Morales. Piñera, after all, is Chile's billionaire president and unabashed free market advocate. Morales, in contrast, is one of the main champions (along with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez) of Latin America's "21st-century socialism." He is the first indigenous president of Bolivia (a country with a majority indigenou

Vladimir Shlapentokh: How is Elitist Ayn Rand a Tea Party Hero?

[Vladimir Shlapentokh is one of the founders of contemporary Soviet sociology. After emigrating to the United States from the USSR in 1979, he published several dozen books, as well as many articles on various sociological issues in Russian and American societies. His upcoming book (with Joshua Woods) is "Feudal America: The Elements of Middle Ages in Contemporary Society."] ...At tea party rallies, posters and praise single out the usual suspects: Thomas Jefferson, Sarah

Victor Cha: Without a Loosened Grip, Reform Will Elude North Korea

[The author is a professor at Georgetown University and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of "North Korea: The Impossible State," which will be published by Ecco in 2011.] The massive Communist Party rallies in North Korea this month provided the world's first real glimpse of that mysterious country's next leader. Kim Jong Eun, youngest son of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, seen in pictures for the first time, wa

Bruce L.R. Smith: The Barack Obama Sr. I Knew

[The writer is a retired senior staff member of the Brookings Institution and now a visiting professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy.] I suspect I am one of the few Americans still alive and modestly in possession of his faculties who knew President Obama's father, and I see nothing of the man I knew in Dinesh D'Souza's Oct. 8 Washington Forum commentary, "The dreams from his father." Barack Obama Sr. was a graduate student in the econom

Nick Turse: Getting a Read on American War

[Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books), which brings together leading analysts from across the political spectrum, has just been published. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute]Quick -- name the five most important, influential, and best known

Clifford D. May: Of Niqabs and Neo-Colonialism

[Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.] ...What do you think about the niqab — sometimes also called a burqa — the veil that leaves only the eyes of a woman uncovered? Critics, not least Muslim critics such as Fadéla Amara, France’s secretary of state for urban policy, suggest that when a woman is forced to wear one it not only deprives her of individuality but is, effectively, a portable pri

George F. Will: A Historic Shift in the Making This Election?

[George F. Will is a columnist for the WaPo.] Voters seem to think Congress is like a weedy lot -- that anything done to it will improve it -- so they seem poised to produce something not seen since 1981-82. Then, for the first time since 1952, a majority of senators were in their first terms. This was the result of three consecutive churning elections -- 1976, 1978 and 1980.... After November, Republican eyes will turn to the prize of the presidency in 2012. Concerning

Greg Mitchell: Upton Sinclair's EPIC Campaign

[Greg Mitchell writes the Media Fix blog for TheNation.com] Nearly two years after a Democrat promising hope and change entered the White House, amid an economic crisis left behind by an unpopular Republican, unemployment remained at century-high levels. Despite new stimulus programs, recovery seemed far off. Opponents in the GOP (and even some in the president's own party) called for cutting spending to reduce the budget deficit. Democrats were split: Was the president acting as b

Jon Cowan and Evan Wolfson: A Quiet Shift in GOP Stance on Gay Marriage

[Jon Cowan is president and co-founder of Third Way, a moderate think tank, and Evan Wolfson is founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry.] As the "tea party's" outsider challenge to Republican Party orthodoxy grabs headlines, another, quieter revolution is unfolding inside the GOP. This rebellion has at its heart a truly surprising issue, one that could have long-term consequences for the party: gay and lesbian couples' freedom to marry. The latest e

John Pilger: Chile's Ghosts Are Not Being Rescued

[John Pilger, Australian-born, London-based journalist, film-maker and author. For his foreign and war reporting, ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Middle East, he has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism. For his documentary films, he won a British Academy Award and an American Emmy. In 2009, he was awarded Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. His latest film is "The War on Democracy."] The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordi

Tim Rutten: In This Election, Follow the Money

[Tim Rutten is a columnist for LA Times.] The emergence of the neo-populist "tea party" has been the big story of this election cycle. After the votes are cast in November, we may realize that the political resurgence of big business and great wealth was far more significant in determining election outcomes. To an extent not seen in generations, companies and wealthy investors with a naked economic interest in influencing election results are pouring money int

Kathleen Parker: The Economic Crisis Was an 'Inside Job'

[Kathleen Parker writes a column for the WaPo.] If you haven't been humming tunes from "Les Misérables," you haven't seen "Inside Job," the new documentary about how our economic crisis evolved. The most forgiving American will want to seize a pitchfork and march on Wall Street. Or Harvard Square. Or in front of the White House. There are so many despicable parties, it's hard to pick a favorite. Is it time to reconsider the Axis of Evil?...

Peter Ferrara: Obama ... so much worse than Carter

[Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union.] The most important fact to take from the September unemployment report released last week is that almost three years after the recession began the economy was still losing jobs! Almost 100,000 (95,000) additional jobs were lost last month from the economy overall. That makes 400,000 jobs lost since May. Moreover, in a regular ann

Con Coughlin: The Afghanistan War's Dividends in Europe

[Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph.] If ever there was a compelling argument for not withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan, it is the State Department's latest terror-threat warning to American citizens that al Qaeda is planning a fresh wave of attacks in Europe. One of the main reasons that the State Department was able to issue the warning is the considerable military and intelligence investment the U.S. and its NATO allies ha

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Condi's Moving Civil Rights Story Can't Trump Her Role in Bush's Despicable Iraq Folly

[Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally acclaimed author and political analyst. Hutchinson is the author of ten books on race and politics in America.] An only slightly repentant former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a well-heeled, prestigious conference crowd on the Future of Asia at the Chinese University of Hong Kong last March that she had doubts and misgivings over the way things ultimately turned out in Iraq. If she had it to do all over again she'd press her bos

Fang Li-Zhi: Liu Xiaobo and the West's naive beliefs about freedom in China

[Fang Li-Zhi, a dissident physicist widely regarded as “China’s Sakharov” and the mentor to the student protestors at Tiananmen Square in 1989, now lives in exile in the United States, where he teaches at the University of Arizona.] I heartily applaud the Nobel Committee for awarding its Peace Prize to the imprisoned Liu Xiaobo for his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. In doing so, the committee has challenged the West to re-examine a dangerous noti