Roundup: Media's Take

Fred Block: Infrastructure, Deficits, and Global Recovery

[Fred Block is a research professor of sociology at the University of California at Davis. His book, edited with Matthew Keller, State of Innovation: The U.S. Government’s Role in Technology Development has just been published by Paradigm.] A TALE of two episodes in the life of a bridge tells us a lot about the dilemmas facing governments around the world. The Bay Bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland was originally built between 1933 and 1936 at a cost of $77 million. After the

Harold Meyerson: Farmworkers, Overtime and Days Off: A California Shame

[Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and a columnist for the Washington Post. He begins a six-week guest columnist stint on our the LA Times op-ed page.] ...Still, one bill that made it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk last week, only to be killed by his veto, is worth looking at for what it tells us about how hard it is to clean out even antiquated moral rot, so long as powerful interests profit from it. The bill, written by San Joaquin Vall

Stephen M. Walt: Rethinking the "Nuclear Revolution"

Ever since graduate school, I've been a firm believer in the "nuclear revolution." The term refers to the belief that the invention of nuclear weapons constituted a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare, and conceivably in international relations itself. As Bernard Brodie put it in The Absolute Weapon (1946): "Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them." (Hmmm. Given that we've fought

Brad Johnson: Meet the Man Who Predicted Global Warming

On Aug. 8, 1975, geoscientist Wallace Smith Broecker published "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" in the journal Science, the first time the iconic phrase "global warming" was used in a scientific paper. Broecker -- known by all as Wally -- was already a prominent scientist by then, having served on Columbia University's faculty for 16 years. Today, at age 78, Broecker is recognized as one of the fathers of climate science, with more than 450 journal public

Sunny Hundal: Neocons are hypocrites on WikiLeaks

[Sunny Hundal is editor of the left-wing blog Liberal Conspiracy and other online magazines.] As soon as the WikiLeaks Afghanistan exposé came to light, it was obvious the usual suspects would start attacking the messenger than discussing the message. David Aaronovitch was quick off the mark, with others following soon enough – implying WikiLeaks was seriously damaging the war effort in Afghanistan. The rhetoric has now reached absurd levels. The US defence secretary sa

Ahmed Rashid: Divide Afghanistan At Your Peril

[The writer’s book, Taliban, has just been updated and reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication.] Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition. The war in Afghanistan just got more complicated with the release of secret military files by the Wikileaks website – a big

Jonah Goldberg: Nostalgia for Buckley Et Al is Misplaced

[Jonah Goldberg writes a column for the LA Times.] Conservatives, being conservatives, have a soft spot for the good old days, but this is getting ridiculous. It seems every day another colleague on the right wants to click his ruby red slippers — or Topsiders — and proclaim, "There's no place like home" — "home" being the days when conservatism was top-heavy with generals but short on troops. The latest example comes from my old National Review coll

William McGurn: WTC Mosque, Meet the Auschwitz Nuns

[William McGurn is a columnist for the WSJ.] With every passing day, the dispute over the planned Islamic Center near Ground Zero grows more acrimonious. These feelings will probably only get worse today, when the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission is expected to remove another hurdle by ruling against landmark status for the undistinguished old building the center will replace.... In the 1980s, Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned building on the edge of

Rachel Schneller: Iraq and the American Pullout ... Separate We Must

[Rachel Schneller, Foreign Service Officer, US State Department, currently International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Government or State Department.] The United States has dug its military into the landscape, requiring enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to maintain its presence. It justifies its Iraq addiction by claiming only its soldiers can prevent Iraqis from killing

Vladimir Kozin: 6 Obstacles to Nuclear Zero

[Vladimir Kozin is chief of the foreign journalists’ accreditation section of the Foreign Ministry’s press center. The opinions reflected in this comment are his own.] Sixty-five years ago, on July 16, 1945, in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first nuclear device was tested. This marked the beginning of the nuclear age. After that, it didn’t take long for leading scientists and world leaders to start lobbying for a nuclear-free world. As far

Ben Lerner: The Other Lockerbies

[Ben Lerner is a Vice President at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.] Senators Menendez and Lautenberg of New Jersey took to the microphone this week to express disappointment that witnesses from the British government and BP -- including outgoing CEO Tony Hayword -- were unavailable to appear before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing convened last week. The purpose of the hearing was to explore BP's alleged role in the release last year by the Scottish go

Editorial in the WSJ: Rewriting Fannie Mae History

If you want proof that the Washington establishment has learned nothing from the 2008 financial panic, look no further than the nearby letter from former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. Our old antagonist is signaling where the debate is heading as Congress finally begins to consider what to do about Fannie and its failed sibling, Freddie Mac. Mr. Raines writes that "the facts about the financial collapse of Fannie and Freddie are pretty clear." So let's review those facts

Bret Stephens: Is Afghanistan Worth It?

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] Even Americans who pride themselves on knowing their history have probably never heard of the Battle of Stones River. Fought over frigid ground in January 1863, the battle gave the Union control over central Tennessee and a badly needed morale boost after the disaster of Fredericksburg two weeks earlier. It also resulted in 1,700 Union and 1,300 Confederate deaths. That's nearly three times the fa

Ron Wilkins: The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod

[Ron Wilkins is a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, he hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. Presently he is an Africana Studies professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. ] Imagine farm workers doing back breakin

Anne Applebaum: America's Peculiar Amnesia

[Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.] ...Alas, historical amnesia appears to have affected some readers, many of whom are under the impression that President Bush believed in small government and that recent Republican congressional leaders opposed federal spending. Here is a more accurate assessment: "President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, includ

Noemie Emery: Neither Roosevelt nor Reagan

[Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.] When he signed the health care reform bill earlier this year, Barack Obama gave progressives the prize they had aimed at for seven-plus decades, an event they compared to the passage of civil rights and of Social Security. At the same time, he destroyed the best chance the Democrats had for enduring center-left governance since the mid 20th-century, shattered the coalition that brought him to power, and dealt his party

Gregory Rodriguez: Affirmative Action's Time is Up

[Gregory Rodriguez is a columnist for the LA Times.] ...Ideally, policy, like politics, is the art of the possible. No matter how good its intentions or outcomes, the benefits of any policy should clearly outweigh the social costs. When affirmative action was established, it was intended to benefit a small percentage of the U.S. population, but as the rationale and scope of the program evolved, so did the number of people it included. Large-scale post-1965 immigration also complicat

Arthur Laffer: The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

[Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of"Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).]Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshalling resources that would otherwise stand idle—workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the fina

Gerry Adams: WikiLeaks and British lies in Ireland

[Gerry Adams is president of Sinn Féin, member of the Legislative Assembly of Northern Ireland for West Belfast and abstentionist MP for West Belfast at Westminster.] In June I stood in the Guildhall Square in Derry and watched as the relatives of the 14 innocent victims of the British Parachute Regiment expressed their delight at the Saville report's conclusion that the 14 were innocent victims. After Bloody Sunday, the British system and, to its shame, much of the British media, a

Charles Moore: A timely recounting of the Weimar disaster that aided Hitler's rise to power

[Charles Moore is a columnist at The Daily Telegraph.] This book, first published in 1975, has just been republished as a warning. It was spotted by Warren Buffett and printed on the internet. Now an enterprising publisher has rushed it out. Concerned citizens have sent copies to central bankers to remind them of what was once, and could be again. In fact, though, its report of the German hyperinflation is so extreme that it has the perverse effect of making the modern