Roundup: Media's Take

Sally Kohn: Why Ethnic Studies Are Good for America

[Sally Kohn, Chief Agitation Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, is a community organizer, writer and political commentator.] There’s a proverb that says, "Until the lion tells his own story of being hunted, history will always glorify the hunter." This, in essence, is the reason for ethnic studies. The wonderful thing about America is that we are and have always been a nation of many stories coming together as one. But an unfortunate fact of our history has b

Wajahat Ali: The Many Problems with France's Proposed Burqa Ban

[Wajahat Ali is a writer and attorney.] As a practicing Muslim, even I admit to being somewhat startled by the appearance of the black burqa that entirely veils a woman's face and body, revealing only a narrow opening for her eyes. Even though the women who wear burqas sometimes remind me of comic book ninjas, I nonetheless understand and respect their choice of dress and freedom of religious expression. Unfortunately, France's proposed ban on the burqa is a hypocritica

Stephen M. Walt: Belated Thoughts on Peter Beinart

[Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.]I was overseas when Peter Beinart’s article on"The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" appeared on the website of the New York Review of Books and started an immediate hullabaloo. I read it quickly online but had little time to reflect on it or to post a reaction. My copy of the NYRB was waiting when I got home, however, and I’ve now had time to digest Beinart’s article

John Yoo: An Executive Without Much Privilege

[John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush.”] PRESIDENTIAL power has emerged as a potential topic of controversy in the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Her supporters from both parties argue that she is a defender of executive power, citing her work as the Obama ad

Olivia Hampton: North Korea ... Obama's 'Dumb War'?

[Olivia Hampton is a journalist based in Washington DC, covering US politics and military affairs.] For years, North Korea has thumped its chest and pumped its fists, shooting ill-fated missiles toward its neighbours and parading its million-strong military with tanks and artillery systems. Now that Kim Jong-il is finally getting the international attention he has craved, the enigmatic leader is rolling the drums of war as Washington steps into the fray. But President O

Garrett Epps: Rand Paul's American Mistake: Taking 'New' for 'Unconstitutional'

[Garrett Epps, a former reporter for The Washington Post, is a novelist and legal scholar. He lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches courses in Constitutional Law and Creative Writing for Law Students at the University of Baltimore. His two most recent books are Peyote vs. the State: Religious Freedom on Trial and Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America.] Some years ago, I gave a public talk on the Bill of Rights. When qu

Subhankar Banerjee: BPing the Arctic? Will the Obama Administration Allow Shell Oil to Do to Arctic Waters What BP Did to the Gulf?

[Subhankar Banerjee is a photographer, writer, and activist. His first book, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, received international media attention because an accompanying exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History was censored in the Bush years.]Bear with me.  I’ll get to the oil.  But first you have to understand where I’ve been and where you undoubtedly won’t go, but Shell’s drilling rigs surely wil

Jeremy R. Hammond: The Simplicity of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and editor of Foreign Policy Journal, an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy.] There is a general perception that the reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued for so long is because it is extremely complex. Nothing could be further from the truth. Placed in historical context, understanding the root cause of the conflict is simple, and in doing so, the solution be

Richard Cohen: A Right Not to Fight in Vietnam

[Richard Cohen writes a column for the Washington Post.] As a kid, I had an abiding fear, reinforced by movies and comic books, that I would die on some foreign battlefield. I would become a casualty of the war that every generation of American men seemed destined to fight: World War I for our grandfathers, World War II for our fathers and Korea for our older brothers. Then came Vietnam, which is where many of my generation drew the line: "Hell no, we won't go," in the cha

Jonah Goldberg: Rand Paul's Civil Rights Act Comments Revisited

[Jonah Goldberg writes a column for the LA Times.] It has already become a cliche on the right to tut-tut at U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul's "rookie" mistake of trying to conduct a "libertarian seminar" during the campaign. I'm not so sure. For starters, if you're not invested in Paul's political career, why not seize this rare opportunity for one of those much-coveted national conversations on race? Besides, Paul's not going to lose b

Ian Bremmer: Dangerous North Korean Insecurity

[Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and author of “The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?”] Following weeks of careful investigation, South Korea has publicly accused North Korea of an overt and deliberate act of war. The evidence is compelling that the North torpedoed the Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors. The South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, has promised to take “stern action,” but Seoul won’t ris

Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez: Wiki-Constitutionalism in Latin America

[Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez directs entrepreneurial development programs for the Sucre municipal government in Caracas, Venezuela. He is a graduate of Carleton College and the Harvard Kennedy School.] Last year, Hugo Chavez amended Venezuela's constitution and abolished term limits. The entire business was a bit odd, but not because the constitution was changed, which is quite common in Latin America. Nor was it because the changes involved extended his rule (which is equally common)

Robert Kagan: Obama's Hollow 'Reset' with Russia

[Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.] It took months of hard negotiating, but finally the administration got Russia to agree to a resolution tightening sanctions on Iran. The United States had to drop tougher measures it wanted to impose, of course, to win approval. Nevertheless, senior Russian officials were making the kinds of strong statements about Iran's nuclear program that they had long refu

John Bolton: Don't mourn the euro ... It's always been anti-American

[John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, is author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the UN and Abroad."] The chaos in world financial markets over the stability of the euro calmed somewhat late last week. But the con ditions causing the European Union crisis -- the solvency and even creditworthiness of many governments using the euro -- are far from resolved, and the next stages may be even more perilous. Realize first that, from th

Bret Stephens: The Mosque at Ground Zero

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] The conservative blogosphere is buzzing with outrage over plans to build a 13-story mosque and Muslim cultural center just a few hundred feet from Ground Zero. As a resident of lower Manhattan, I see it differently: The center—to be known as Cordoba House and built (if it is ever built) at a cost of $100 million—might yet serve as an excellent test case for tolerance. Muslim toleranc

Katherine Zoepf: Why So Few Medals of Honor in Iraq and Afghanistan?

[Katherine Zoepf, who writes regularly for The Times, is working on a book about young women in the contemporary Arab world.] ON NOV. 15, 2004, several Marines in dress uniforms came to Rosa Peralta’s San Diego home to tell her that her 25-year-old son, Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, had been killed in Falluja by an improvised explosive device. Rosa Peralta was widowed three years earlier when her husband, a mechanic, was crushed to death in a freak accident while working on a garbage

Andrew Sullivan: The Anti-Beinart Fallacy

[Andrew Sullivan writes for the Atlantic Monthly.]I'm glad Peter has gotten around to a response to the fundamental argument his critics have made, and shown the bleeding obvious - that it is not an argument at all: The main complaint is that I didn’t spend enough time discussing the nastiness of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and extremist Muslims in general. Well: duh. This was an essay about Israel and America's Jewish leadership, not about

Alan Johnson: The New Authoritarian Marxism

[Alan Johnson is a professor of democratic theory and practice at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, England and was the founder and editor of Democratiya, a free online journal of international politics that has now merged with Dissent.] In his book Did Somebody say Totalitarianism?, Slavoj Žižek tells us what has gone wrong on the Left and how we are to put things right.The Left has accepted the basic coordinates of liberal democracy (“democracy” versus “t

Nick Gillespie: How to Save Cleveland (and Other Dying Cities)

[Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com) is the editor of reason.com and reason.tv.] ...Since its population hit a high point in 1950, Cleveland has lost more than half of its residents and essentially all of its economic and cultural capital. The Rapture happened here, but instead of going to the bosom of God in heaven, the elect ended up in Houston, Charlotte, Los Angeles, New York, and, most galling of all because of its proximity and broad

Christopher Hitchens: We are Kim Jong-il's Willing Accomplices

[Christopher Hitchens is a British journalist. He writes for Slate, among other publications.] The military flags displayed at both ends of the Panmunjom strip are testimony to the fact of a cease-fire line, because the Korean War never ended. This is at best an armistice. And we are regularly reminded that the Korean peninsula could explode into a full-scale war or, rather, resumption of war, at any moment. The most recent reminder was the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean fri