Roundup: Media's Take

George Jonas: Assassination: A Brief History

[George Jonas is author of Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, which was adapted for the film Munich.] Opponents couldn't make political hay out of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's withholding (if he did) from congressional scrutiny secret CIA programs to assassinate high-ranking al Qaeda operatives, if people had no qualms about targeted killing. But they do. Governments can bomb faceless troops of enemy conscripts with impunity, but are question

Robert Creamer: Memo to Members of Congress: Don't Be on the Wrong Side of History

[Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on amazon.com.] more details at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer Today it would be hard to find one member of Congress who openly advocates the abolition of Medicare or Social Security. It's true that during the Bush Presidency, right-wing Republicans

By Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie: What's Next, Mr. President -- Cardigans?

[Nick Gillespie is the editor of Reason.com and Reason.tv. Matt Welch is editor of Reason magazine. They will discuss this article online at 11 a.m. on Monday at www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.] Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from

Steve Benen: Dems need to remember Republican strategy on health care in 1993 was to break the party's momentum

In 1993, Bill Kristol privately advised congressional Republicans to do whatever it took to "kill" the Clinton health care reform initiative. It wasn't that the policy proposal was a bad idea; it was that passage would help the Democratic Party for years to come. The GOP, he said, for the sake of its own future, couldn't compromise or negotiate with the majority. Sixteen years later, a wide variety of Democrats are working hard to convince Republicans to support reform, de

Adam Holland: Fascist follies in the European Parliament

[Mr. Holland runs an investigative blog.] Csanád Szegedi (pictured at right), one of three newly elected Hungarian members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the fascist Jobbik party, came to the parliament's July 14 opening session wearing the uniform of the party's illegal Magyar Garda militia. (Read here, and

Jon Meacham: A Lion, But No Lionization (Re: Ted Kennedy)

[Jon Meacham is the Editor of Newsweek. Meacham’s latest book, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for biography or autobiography...He has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The Washington Post Book World...Meacham graduated from The McCallie School and from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with a degree summa cum laude in English Literature.] It was an u

Peter Bergen: Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam

[Peter Bergen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a frequent visitor to Afghanistan since 1993.] Throughout his campaign last year, President Barack Obama said repeatedly that the real central front of the war against terrorists was on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And now he is living up to his campaign promise to roll back the Taliban and al-Qaeda with significant resources. By the end of the year there will be some 70,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan, and

Michael J. Petrilli: Sarah Palin, anti-intellectualism, and the plight of the liberal arts

[Mr. Petrilli is vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank in Washington, DC.] "She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and

David Rogers: A generational shift

On July 20, 1965, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara warned President Lyndon Johnson that U.S. deaths in Vietnam could soon come at the rate of 500 a month, the equivalent of 6,000 a year. Ten days later, Johnson — still pursuing his Great Society dreams — signed a landmark Medicare-Medicaid bill to provide health care for the nation’s elderly and poor. It’s all ancient history in today’s Washington, which has leapt ahead to the first president of the post-Vietnam gene

Daniel Henninger: Talking his way onto Mount Rushmore?

... Mr. Obama is not the nation's Speaker in Chief. He's not a senator, and he's no longer a candidate. He's the president. A president's major speeches are different than those of anyone else. That high office imposes demands beyond the power of a podium. Inspiration matters, but the office also requires acts of leadership. A U.S. president's words must be connected to something beyond sentiment and eloquence. Too much of the time, Barack Obama's big speeches don't seem to be connected to anyth

John Yoo: Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps

[Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03 and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings, could not detect its operatives' entry into the country, nor predict where it might strike next. Suppose an al Qaeda cell in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles was p

William Greider: Dismantling the Temple

[National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and, most recently, Come Home, America.] The financial crisis has propelled the Federal Reserve into an excruciating political dilemma. The Fed is at the zeni

David Burge: A Wise Latina Will Add Spice to the Menudo of Justice

Iowahawk Guest Commentary by Judge Sonia Sotamayor Nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court There has been a great deal written in recent weeks about an old extemporaneous quote of mine in which I stated that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." One needn't read the prophetic entrails of my culture's colorful Santeria chicken sac

David Kilcullen: For answers to the Afghan-Pakistan conflict, ask ... what would Curzon do?

[Dr David Kilcullen, author of The Accidental Guerrilla (Hurst/Oxford 2009), served in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2006 and 2008 as Special Adviser for Counterinsurgency to the US Secretary of State.] Britain’s eyes this week are on southern Afghanistan. US Marines have doubled Coalition troop numbers in Helmand and are moving to clear Taleban base areas as part of Operation Khanjar. A major British offensive is also underway: Operation Panchai Palang, an effort to extend Coalition

Robert Creamer: If Congress Fails to Pass the Obama Health Care Plan

[Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.] In the current health care debate, Democratic Members of Congress representing swing districts have often (though not always) been among the most cautious when it comes to supporting President Obama's proposals for health care reform. In many ways that is understandable. They often come from districts th

Steve Padilla: Sotomayor hearings: Looking back in court history -- to when the first Jewish nominee was considered by the Judiciary Committee

[Steve Padilla is an Assistant National Editor for the LA Times.] Periodically during this week’s Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the Ticket will pause to share some history on the court and the committee. In his opening remarks Monday,  committee Chairman Patrick Leahy alluded to that history, recounting the key role the committee has played in the nation’s affairs. He spoke of the committee’s role in shepherding the Civi

Thomas L. Friedman: Goodbye Iraq, and Good Luck

[Thomas L. Friedman became the paper's foreign-affairs columnist in 1995.] I’m in the provincial headquarters building in downtown Kirkuk — the oil-rich district of northern Iraq that is the most disputed corner of this country. The provincial leaders — Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians — have come to meet America’s top military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with whom I am tagging along. All 11 Iraqi leaders are seated on one side of a con

Michael Lind: History shows that piecemeal reform is better than a Big Bang

In its push to solve the long-term problems of U.S. healthcare and energy in only a few months by means of comprehensive reform legislation, the Obama administration and the Democratic majority could be inspired by the story of Henry Clay's success in framing the Compromise of 1850. In the greatest feat of his long career in American politics, the great Kentucky senator put together a comprehensive package of reforms that won bipartisan support, resolved outstanding issues about slavery and the

Michiko Kakutani: The Choices That Closed a Window Into Afghanistan

Among the many lasting consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the collateral damage it inflicted on Afghanistan and the war there against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Money, troops and expertise were diverted to Iraq, and as the RAND Corporation political scientist Seth G. Jones observes in his useful new book, the initial success of the military operation in Afghanistan was squandered. The slender window for securing a stable democracy in Afghani

Gideon Rachman: China is now an empire in denial

[Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist.] When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it suddenly became obvious that the USSR had never been a proper country. It was a multinational empire held together by force. Might we one day say the same of China? Of course, any such suggestion is greeted with rage in Beijing. Chinese politicians are modern-minded pragmatists when it comes to economic management. But they revert to Maoist language when questions