Roundup: Media's Take

Mary Dejevsky: A Spy Mission Left Behind by History, or a New Tactic by post-Soviet Russia?

[Mary Dejevsky is a columnist at The Independent.] Having worked as a reporter in Moscow, Washington and indeed London, I have learnt only two lessons from the periodic eruption of espionage dramas. The first is that, however seductive and meticulous the detail, things are seldom completely as they seem. The second is that, despite the end of the Cold War, pretty much everyone is still at it: note the terse "no comment" given by Britain's former ambassador in Moscow Tony

Con Coughlin: Don't they know the Cold War is over?

[Con Coughlin, the Telegraph's executive foreign editor, is a world-renowned expert on the Middle East and Islamic terrorism.] For the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the exposure of a Moscow-run spy ring in the heart of the American suburbs could not have come at a more embarrassing moment. Only a few days before the FBI made its dramatic arrests in New York, Mr Medvedev was being fêted in Washington, where President Barack Obama entertained him to lunch at his favourite ha

Jeffrey Rosen: Why Louis Brandeis Matters

[Jeffrey Rosen is the legal affairs editor for The New Republic.]Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon, 955 pp., $40)I.In 1916, Herbert Croly, the founder and editor of The New Republic, wrote to Willard Straight, the owner of the magazine, about the Supreme Court nomination of Louis Brandeis. Croly enclosed a draft editorial called “The Motive of Class Consciousness,” and also a chart prepared by a lawyer in B

Texas Freedom Network: Politics and Curriculum Standards in Texas

Gov. Rick Perry has been doing all he can to solidify his support among far-right pressure groups. This weekend (July 2-3), for example, Gov. Perry will be speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s Texas Defending the American Dream Summit in Austin.... Here was a panel that especially caught our eye: “Texas Textbook Wars & Curriculum Controversies.” Seeing that panel topic at an AFP confab is hardly a surprise to us. During the long debate at the Texas State Board o

Suzy Khimm and David Corn: Michael Steele's Thurgood Marshall Fail

[Suzy Khimm is a reporter in the Washington bureau of Mother Jones. E-mail her with tips and ideas at skhimm(at)motherjones(dot)com. For more of her stories, click here. Follow her on Twitter here. David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.] During confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, it almost seemed as if the late and legendary Justice Thurgood Marshall was the one being vette

Robert Wright: The Myth of Modern Jihad

[Robert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.] It would be an understatement to say that Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, pleaded guilty last week. “I’m going to plead guilty a hundred times over,” Shahzad told the judge. Why so emphatic? Because Shahzad is proud of himself. “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim soldier,” he said. This got some fist pumps in right-wing circles, because it seemed to confirm that America faces all-out jihad, and

John Rapley: Jamaica is a Neo-Medieval State

[John Rapley is President of the Caribbean Policy Research Institute, an independent think tank affiliated with the University of the West Indies.] On June 22, Jamaican police stopped a car they had been tracking down a rain-sodden highway. Inside was a man rather poorly disguised to look rather like a woman on her way to a church convention. In fact, the man was Christopher "Dudus" Coke, the notorious gang leader whom police had been chasing for over a month. Two days lat

David Leonhardt: Governments Move to Cut Spending, in 1930s Echo

[David Leonhardt is a economics journalist with the New York Times.] The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.... The policy mistakes of the 1930s stemmed mostly from ignorance. John Maynard Keynes was still a practicing economist in tho

Marvin Hier: Holocaust: a Huge Word Made Small

[Rabbi Marvin Hier is the Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.] ...The Holocaust was a watershed event in the history of mankind, in which 6 million Jews — one-third of the world's Jewish population — were exterminated. But today the word is used in ways that cheapen it.... The Holocaust was a total eclipse of humanity. It was not about going to the back of the line or eating in a different part of the restaurant or being escorted to the border without recou

Dayo Olopade: Why Are 53 Countries Rooting for Ghana?

[Dayo Olopade is a reporter for The Daily Beast in Washington, and a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.] "When you're playing an African team, you're playing the whole continent." So reads one of several different World Cup ads sponsored by South African telecommunications giant MTN. The participatory slogans ("I Believe in Africa"; "United We Score") riff on a theme of continental solidarity--and their ubiquitous placement seems to

Dahlia Lithwick: Elena Kagan is "Green Tea" at Her Confirmation Hearings

[Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.] There is something achingly familiar about Monday afternoon's opening day of Solicitor General Elena Kagan's Supreme Court Senate confirmation hearings. The talking points on both sides—"liberal judicial activist" and "justices who understand real people"—are so overused that at first you think you just might be listening to the mix tape Chief Justice John Roberts prepared for Justice Samuel Alito's hearings. It's not j

Erik Voeten: David Brooks, Epiphanies, and Social Science

[Erik Voeten is the Peter K Krogh Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University] David Brooks has a rather curious op-ed in today’s New York Times that draws public policy lessons from the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. The op-ed starts off with a description of the AA’s founder who managed to shrug off his alcohol addiction after an epiphany in which a

Stephen Kinzer: BP in the Gulf -- The Persian Gulf

[Stephen Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent and the author of Bitter Fruit and Overthrow, among other works.  His newest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future.]To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the club.  It's great not to be the only member any more!Does boycotting BP really make sense?  Perhaps not.  Aft

Eugene Robinson: Robert Byrd: A Story of Change and Redemption

"End of an era" is an overused trope, but in this case it's appropriate: The last of the old Southern Democrats is gone. Sen. Robert Byrd had long since repented, of course. The West Virginian, who died Monday at 92, deeply regretted his segregationist past, which included a year as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and at least several more years as a Klan sympathizer. He eventually became a passionate advocate for civil rights, and he was one of the most vocal supporters of l

Mona Charen: Obama Owes Bush an Apology

[Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.] Had it not been for opposing war, President Obama might never have been catapulted to the White House. It was taken for granted in the run-up to the presidential campaign of 2008 that candidate Obama had principled objections to the war in Iraq. He was the Left’s champion against Sen. Hillary Clinton, who had — along with 29 of the then 50 Democratic senators — voted in favor of the Iraq War resolution. That vote was t

Dominic Lawson: A Napoleonic Lesson on Austerity

[Dominic Lawson is a columnist for The Independent.] There is a phrase never far from the lips of the Government's critics, one that has assumed a peculiar potency: it is that the coalition's plans to reduce our national debt "will take money out of the economy". By this the critics say they are referring to the cuts in public expenditure outlined by George Osborne in his Budget last week – which are indeed eye-watering. Yet the alternative to such cuts would

Bret Stephens: Afghanistan ... Eyes Wide Shut

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs, which runs every Tuesday in the U.S. and is also published in the European and Asian editions of the paper.] With a wink of its left eye, the Obama administration tells its liberal base that a year from now the U.S. will be heading for a quick Afghan exit. "Everyone knows there's a firm date," insists White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. With a wink of its right, the admi

Josh Marshall: Was Byrd Compromised By the Klan?

[Josh Marshall is an editor at Talking Points Memo.] While remembering Robert C. Byrd today we would not do him justice without taking stock of the major blot on his public life: the fact that his early life and political career was inextricably bound up with the politics of racism. That much is not in dispute. Byrd spent the latter part of his life admitting as much and apologizing for it. The outstanding question is whether it compromised him in the bulk of his public career that

David Cole: The Roberts Court's Free Speech Problem

[David Cole is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.] On January 21, in its first decision of this term, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s five-member conservative majority announced that the First Amendment bars Congress from imposing even mild constraints on the ways corporations can employ their vast financial resources to drown out the voices of ordinary people in federal election campaigns. On June 21, in one of its last deci

Steve Kettmann: Byrd, Despite Dark Past, May Have Been the Last Great U.S. Senator

[Steve Kettmann is an American writer living in Berlin who writes a weekly column on politics for the Berliner Zeitung. He has reported from more than 35 countries for publications including ForeignPolicy.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, the New Republic, Washington Monthly, Salon.com, Wired.com and Motherjones.com, and was a finalist for the 2001 Online Journalism Award in commentary.] I hope the passing of Robert Byrd, longest-serving Senator in the history of