Roundup: Media's Take

John B. Judis: The Case for Deficit Spending

[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] If there was one thing that seemed certain about the Obama administration, it was their commitment to Keynesian deficit spending to boost the economy out of its slump. But Keynes beware: With unemployment at a whopping 10.2 percent, and probably rising, the White House has begun trumpeting its commitment to Hoover-style deficit busting. On November 13, the

Nick Danforth: How the West Lost Turkey

[Nick Danforth is a Turkish affairs specialist at Concepts & Strategies, a global strategic communications firm. He also blogs about Turkey for the Project on Middle East Democracy.] Lately, some on the right in Washington have fretted that Turkey's religiously oriented Justice and Development Party, the AKP, will distance the country from its Western allies, eroding secularism as it seeks tighter bonds within the Middle East. After all, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has p

Dallas Darling: From Radical Republicans to Rich Republicans?

[Dallas Darling is the author of "Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action," "Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision," and "The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace." He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Da

Harry Mount: Mark Lowe is right: The Romans said it better

[Amo, Amas, Amat and All That – How to Become a Latin Lover' by Harry Mount is published by Short Books (£7.99)] Next time you curse a flashing speed camera or are undertaken on the inside lane of the M40, here's a little tip: say your rude words in Latin. That's what Mark Lowe, the millionaire hedge-fund boss being sued for wrongful dismissal, did when he sent an email quoting one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin – or in any other language, for that matter.

Nicholas D. Kristof: The Religious Wars

[Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.] Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts. Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges;

Max Hastings: A cowardly Navy, a cautious SAS and Britain's humiliation by a pirate rabble

On February 16, 1940, the destroyer Cossack, acting on Churchill's personal orders, steamed headlong into neutral Norwegian territorial waters in defiance of international law, boarded the German freighter Altmark and freed 299 captive British merchant seamen. Legend held that the first the prisoners knew of their deliverance was a shout down a hatchway from a sailor on deck: 'The Navy's here!' The episode passed into folklore, exemplifying the Royal Navy's centuries-old tradition o

John Reid: Remember Mumbai

[John Reid, a former British secretary of defense and home secretary, is chairman of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at University College, London.] The first anniversary this week of the Mumbai atrocities serves as a timely reminder of the real and present threat from terrorism and its global nature. Over the three days of attacks from Nov. 26 to 29 last year, it is estimated that more than 170 civilians and security personnel were murdered, including

Sergei Guriev and Aleh Tsyvinsky: Russia Regresses into Stalinist Past

[Sergei Guriev is the Morgan Stanley Professor of Economics and rector of the New Economic School. Aleh Tsyvinsky is a professor at Yale University and the New Economic School. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.] After President Dmitry Medvedev’s state-of-the-nation address, we were planning to write about whether it is possible to carry out modernization in Russia without political liberalization. But last week’s tragic death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a pretrial detention faci

Melanie Kirkpatrick: Happy Franksgiving

[—Ms. Kirkpatrick is a former deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.] Last I checked, Thanksgiving is still scheduled to take place tomorrow. The economic news may be gloomy, but unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, President Barack Obama has not tinkered with the date of the holiday. In 1939, FDR decided to move Thanksgiving Day forward by a week. Rather than take place on its traditional date, the last Thursday of November, he de

Maureen Dowd: Thanks for the Memories (on the WH's Greg Craig)

[Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for The New York Times Magazine.] At his Cabinet meeting Monday afternoon, President Obama took a moment to give thanks to his

Rebecca Solnit: Learning How to Count to 350, Remembering People Power in Seattle in 1999 and Berlin in 1989

[Rebecca Solnit is the author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster and co-author with her brother David of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, a short anthology looking at how that watershed event has been misrepresented and reproducing some of the original documents. She's signed beyondtalk.net’s pledge to take action on climate change and she'll be out in the streets again this November 30th.] Next month, at the climate c

Saswato R. Das: A Permanent Outpost on the Moon?

[Saswato R. Das is a science and technology writer in New York.] The discovery of a significant amount of water on the Moon, announced recently by NASA, has fired up space enthusiasts and would-be lunar colonists. Building a permanent base on the Moon suddenly seems a lot less daunting... ... But more than anything else, what last week’s discovery underscores is that our instruments are finally coming of age: we are witnessing another golden era of astronomy, when our i

Bennett Ramberg: The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan Through CIA Eyes: Lessons for the United States Today

[Bennett Ramberg (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, J.D. UCLA), is a nationally recognized expert on nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism and international politics. Over the years, he has been a foreign policy analyst and/or consultant to the Department of State (Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs), U.S. Senate, Nuclear Control Institute, Henry Stimson Center, Global Green and Committee to Bridge the Gap.] As President Obama grapples with sending additional forces to Afghanistan he would

Mazin al-Mutabaqani: A Saudi View of Orientalism

Mazin S. Motabbagani (or, in accurate transcription, al-Mutabaqani) is assistant professor of Orientalism at King Saud University in Riyadh, and head of the Occidental Studies Unit in the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, also in Riyadh. Born a Jordanian by origin in 1950, he submitted his doctoral thesis in 1993 to the faculty of Islamic propagation at Riyadh's Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University where he also taught. Motabbagani's thesis, like most of his later academic

Ray McGovern: McChrystal Testing the Limits

[Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst at the CIA for 27 years, and is on the Steering Group of VIPS.] It is not too late for President Barack Obama to follow the example of Harry Truman, who fired Gen. Douglas McArthur in 1951 for insubordination. Then, as now, the stakes were high. Then it was Korea; now it is Afghanistan. No more slaps on the wrist for Gen. Stanley McChrys

Michael Rubin: Review of The Next Founders, Voices of Democracy in the Middle East

[Michael Rubin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.] On January 21, 2005, George W. Bush looked out over the crowds gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol for his second inaugural and declared, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal o

Tunku Varadarajan: Obama's Forgotten Friends

[Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. (Follow him on Twitter here.)] On Tuesday evening, the world’s most consequential turbaned man, Manmohan Singh, will glide through White House security and take his place at a dinner table beside Barack and Michelle Obama. He is the prime minister of India, a country that could, i

Bret Stephens: The Carter Ricochet Effect

[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. He is a deputy editorial page editor, responsible for the editorial pages of the Asian and European editions of the paper, the columnists on foreign affairs, and the Far Eastern Economic Review.] An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroa

Ken Blackwell: Welcome Back, Carter

[Ken Blackwell is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.] The Norwegian Parliament can't build a "spite fence" between themselves and the United States. But they have a more effective way of showing their contempt for some of our elected leaders. They give out Nobel Peace Prizes. Leftist Scandinavian lawmakers are not like members of the College of Cardinals. Roman Catholic pr

Bret Stephens: The Carter Ricochet Effect

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever. No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the c