Roundup: Media's Take

Debra Burlingame: Obama and the 9/11 Families

[Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.] In February I was among a group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims' families who met with the president at the White House to discuss his policies regarding Guantanamo detainees. Although many of us strongly opposed Barack Obama's dec

Brian Beutler and Eric Kleefeld: Sessions Subordinate: I Thought I'd Be Fired If I Objected To Being Called 'Boy'

When it became clear that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was poised to become ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, we recalled this 2002 article by Sarah Wildman which addresses some of the controversies that kept Sessions from being confirmed in 1986 as a U.S. District Court judge in Alabama. Wildman writes in particular that the testimonies of two witnesses--a Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, and a black Sessions subordinate named Thomas Figures--helped

Joe Klein: Is This Health Care's Moment?

[ Journalist and columnist, current affairs contributor at Time.] Economic crises come and go, but entitlements are forever. The Great Depression eventually dissipated, but Franklin Roosevelt's crown jewel — the Social Security system — is still with us. And so it will be with the Obama Administration. The early headlines have been all about the President's efforts to repair the financial system and jump-start the economy. If he succeeds, he probably will be re-elected. But Barack O

David Kampf: Not So Fast ... Rethinking America's Decline

[David Kampf is a writer and analyst based in Washington. Recently, he directed communications for the United States Agency for International Development and President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Rwanda. He writes for the Foreign Policy Association's blog, Rising Powers.] Have we really reached the end of American hegemony? For those who think so, the signs of America's decline and the rise of emerging powers are everywhere. According to this line of argument, the world's so

Jonah Goldberg: Obama's remarks on Churchill are history badly misread

President Obama recently offered a nice little sermonette on “shortcuts.” Asked about his decision to release the “torture memos” and ban waterboarding, Obama said: “I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t torture,’ when … all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. … C

Timothy P. O'Neill: Enough Ivy League judges on top court

[Timothy P. O'Neill, a professor at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, has written and lectured widely on criminal law and criminal procedure. Among his articles was a 2007 piece for the Oklahoma Law Review: "The Stepford Justices: The Need for Experiential Diversity on the Roberts Court." He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Michigan Law School.] ... Many commentators have noted that this is the first Supreme Court in American histo

Anatole Kaletsky: America will still rule the post-crisis world

[Anatole Kaletsky writes for The Times Comment pages on Thursdays.] I am just back from Washington where the green shoots of recovery have sprouted into a jungle on Wall Street, if not yet on main street or in other countries. I was addressing a meeting of US and European diplomats to survey the geopolitical horizons. As the world economy gradually returns to something approaching normality after the catastrophe triggered by the Lehmans bankruptcy on September 15 last

Michael Crowley: Barack in Iraq

As a candidate for president in 1968, Richard Nixon ran on what is (apocryphally) remembered as a "secret plan to end the war" in Vietnam. We now know, of course, that Nixon had no such intention. Today, Barack Obama's campaign is largely based around a promise to "end the war" in Iraq by withdrawing troops within 16 months. But some Washington foreign policy mandarins insist this isn't possible--that a total U.S. withdrawal isn't achievable and Obama knows it. T

Fatima Bhutto: Obama's Murderous Guest

[Ms. Bhutto is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, an elected member of parliament, who was assassinated in 1996.] Besides ruining my country, I believe my aunt's husband, Pakistani President Zardari, orchestrated my father’s murder. Is Obama really going to offer him billions more when they meet today? Something rotten has arrived in Washington. Today, President Barack Obama will shake hands and stage Oval Office photo ops for the first time with the man who m

David Harsanyi: Sorry, history just ain't that easy

[David Harsanyi is an award-winning columnist and an editorial board member at The Denver Post.] It's fun to be idealistic in a world of moral absolutes. I know, I'm a columnist. But when we start discussing history, things always seem to get complicated. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show"learned this recently when debating the Foundation for Defense of Democracies president Cliff May about the harsh interrogation techniques administered during the Bush administ

Media Matters: Media myths and falsehoods about the Supreme Court

With Supreme Court Justice David Souter's recently announced retirement, Media Matters for America presents the

Peter Bergen: Afghan leader holding strong cards

[Peter Bergen is the author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader.] There will be much to discuss -- principally, of course, how to reverse the rising tide of Talibanization on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border, which is a key foreign policy challenge for the Obama administration. But how long will Obama and Zardari have to deal with Karzai whose five-year presidential term expires this month and who is now up for election on A

Robert Mackey: Pakistan’s British-Drawn Borders

In their fascinating account of a series of interviews with a Taliban tactician in Tuesday’s New York Times, Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah point to “one distinct Taliban advantage: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan barely exists for the Taliban.” In previous posts on The Lede, we’ve mentioned that Pakistan and the rest of the world believes that Afghanistan ends (and Pakistan begins) more or less where a 1,600-mile line was drawn on the world map in 1893, at the directio

Kate Phillips: A Post-Script on Churchill, Obama and Torture

Given that the definitions and practices of brutal interrogation methods, past and present, remain part of our modern-day debate, it seems worthwhile to revisit the remarks President Obama made during his “100 Days” news conference about Winston Churchill’s views on torture and gather some of the discussion that has ensued since then. To recap, journalists and bloggers spent the days after Mr. Obama’s news conference dissecting his remarks, and countering them with evidence uncovere

Aleksander Kwasniewski: No More Berlin Walls

[Mr. Kwasniewski was president of Poland from 1995 to 2005.] It will be 20 years later this month since President George H.W. Bush delivered his historic call for a "Europe whole and free" in Mainz, West Germany. The context in which he spoke was one of optimism and change made possible by Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Four days later, Poland held its first competitive, multiparty elections in more than half a century. By the end of the year the Berlin Wall lay in ruins and

Christopher Hitchens: Why Obama cited Churchill on torture

[Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.] He didn't get the attention he deserved for it, but President Obama was very cleverly fusing liberal principles with an appeal to the basic conservative values of"Old Europe" when, in his 100th-day press conference, he used Winston Churchill to justify his opposition to water-boarding and other"enhanced methods." He told his audience that, even at a

Gideon Rachman: Obama's 'apologies' are a strength

[Gideon Rachman became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006.] “I will never apologise for the United States, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” President George H.W. Bush’s statement in 1988 was more than just a “Bushism”, of the sort that his son later made famous. It was also a pithy summary of a whole school of thought in the US. For many conservative Americans, one of the besetting sins of their liberal rivals is a tendency to go

Deepak Tripathi: On Obama’s Pakistan Test

[Deepak Tripathi, former BBC journalist, is a researcher and an author with particular reference to South and West Asia and US policy. His forthcoming book, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, will be published by Potomac Books in November 2009. His works can be found on http://deepaktripathilibrary.wordpress.com and he can be reached at: DandATripathi@gmail.com.] R

David Shribman: Presidents Don't Prosecute Their Predecessors

[David Shribman is The Boston Globe's Washington bureau chief, assisting managing editor, and columnist.] When Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams, a contest that put America on such a different footing that it is remembered today as the Revolution of 1800, he did not seek to put members of the Adams administration on trial. When Warren G. Harding followed Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1921, he did not put Edith Galt Wilson on trial for usurping the office of the presidency

Alan Abramowitz: The Obama Generation ... Celebrity Worshippers or Responsible Citizens?

[Dr. Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and the author of Voice of the People: Elections and Voting Behavior in the United States (2004, McGraw-Hill). He can be contacted via email at polsaa@emory.edu.] Americans under the age of 30 played a major role in the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. According to the 2008 national exit poll, 18-29 year-olds made