Roundup: Media's Take

Nikolas Gvosdev: Reagan Plagiarized

[Nikolas Gvosdev is editor of The National Interest.] With Senator Barack Obama’s pledge to conduct a foreign policy that would be “sometimes like Ronald Reagan’s,” and Senator John McCain’s description of himself as a “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” the iconic shadow of the fortieth president of the United States continues to fall on American politics, twenty years after he left office. Most Republicans—and many Democrats (some more reluctantly than others) pr

Humberto Fontova: Former JFK Speechwriter Joins Obama. Yeah?

[Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him." Visit www.hfontova.com.] JFK called Ted Sorensen his “intellectual blood-bank.” No presidential speechwriter has ever earned such a tribute. Now the 80-year-old Sorensen has jumped aboard the Obama campaign as an enthusiastic adviser. "Senator Obama is the one candidate who can restore America's moral authority a

E.J.Dionne: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, working hard to elect John McCain

[E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. ]The Democratic presidential candidates are doing a splendid job helping John McCain get to the White House. Barack Obama violated two elementary rules of political campaigning. A candidate should never play the role of a political sc

John B. Judis: Barack Obama's going to be the bitter one at the end of this

Some liberal commentators have downplayed the effect of Barack Obama's fundraising speech at a San Francisco fundraiser last week. But that's wishful thinking. Along with the revelations about Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, his remarks in San Francisco will haunt him not only in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but also in the general election against John McCain, assuming he gets the Democratic nomination. To win in November, a Democrat

David Sirota: The Ludlow legacy and labor's troubles in Colombia

[David Sirota is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota] Ninety-four years ago on April 20, America made international news when a government-sanctioned paramilitary unit murdered Colorado union organizers at a Rockefeller-owned coal mine. The Ludlow Massacre was "a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfar

Sidney Blumenthal: Dick Cheney was never a "grown-up"

[Editor's note: This article is excerpted by permission from the 2008 edition of "The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power," published this month by Union Square Press, along with a new book, "The Strange Death of Republican America."]

David Paul Kuhn: Obama as San Fran Liberal Elitist

[David Paul Kuhn, a Politico.com senior political writer, is author of the The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.] It's difficult to underestimate the enduring impact of Barack Obama's "bitter" remark. The day after John Kerry blurted that he "actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" Vice President Dick Cheney ripped into the Democratic nominee and GOP strategists were already envisioning a new ad featuring the gaffe, i

Buzz Bissinger: Time to end the Olympics

[Buzz Bissinger is the author of “Friday Night Lights” and “Three Nights in August.”] IN 1894, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, having refused the military and political careers typical of a French aristocrat, settled upon the revival of the Olympic Games as his life’s work. He saw sport as a higher calling, a religion. And he saw the Olympics as an event that would enhance and heighten moral virtue: “May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its

Don Bohning & Jack Hawkins: Kennedy, Bush made similar mistakes in Cuba, Iraq

[Don Bohning is a former Miami Herald Latin America Editor and author of ''The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965.'' Jack Hawkins, USMC (Ret.), is a World War II prisoner of war. He is the author of ''Never Say Die,'' the story of his experiences as a POW, his escape from the Japanese camps and his eventual rescue by an American submarine.] Don Bohning: I met Jack Hawkins, now 91, for the first time in the fall of 1996 while researching my book, ''Th

Max Boot: The Secret History of Neoconservatism

The furor over the supposedly perfidious influence of “neocons” in the making of Bush foreign policy seems to have died down a bit. But it will nevertheless remain part of the lasting legend about this administration. Bob Kagan, one of our foremost foreign policy sages, has a must-read article on the subject in the latest issue of Lawrence Kaplan’s new foreign policy quarterly, World Affairs. Kagan makes many valuable points, but in essence his argument is that there is absolutely n

R.H. Lossin: Iraq's Ruined Library Soldiers On

[R.H. Lossin is a librarian and writer in Brooklyn, New York.] The brutalities of the Iraq war accumulate so fast it is difficult to keep track. But in this season of fifth-year anniversaries, one largely forgotten crime demands to be recalled, in part because it relates directly to the politics of memory itself. Five years ago this week, US troops stood by as looters sacked the Iraq National Library and Archives (INLA)--one of the oldest and most used in the world. In Arab countrie

David Paul Kuhn: Obama's Dukakis Moment ... Bowling Blunders Matter

[David Paul Kuhn, a Politico.com senior political writer, is author of the The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.] Last week many had their fun poking fun at Barack Obama's gutter balls. Monday on Ellen Hillary Clinton decided to toss a little ball at some pins on set in order to keep Obama's bowling blunder in the conversation. It wasn't the most tactful response. But Obama's poor showing was again talked about. Forest for the trees, bad bowling rea

Alvaro Vargas Llosa: Four lessons learned from Mugabe's horrific regime

[Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author of Liberty for Latin America, is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute.] Robert Mugabe's defeat in the recent elections in Zimbabwe is the beginning of the end for that country's octogenarian tyrant. Although the government claims that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai fell short of the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff election, only a massive fraud in the second round followed by a brutal clampdown o

Patrick Cockburn: Petraeus's Ghost

[Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for The Independent in London. He has visited Iraq countless times since 1977 and was recipient of the 2004 Martha Gellhorn Prize for war reporting as well as the 2006 James Cameron Memorial Award. His book The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, was short-listed for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007. This essay is the last chapter in his new book, M

Edward McClelland: How 1968 changed Hillary

| Forty years and four days ago, Hillary Rodham stormed into a friend's dorm room at Wellesley College and slammed her book bag against a wall. "I can't stand it anymore!" she screamed, in tears. "I can't take it!" It was April 4, 1968, and Hillary had just heard the news of Martin Luther King's assassination. The entire nation was grieving that day, but Hillary's anguish was especially palpable, because King himself had started her on her path to po

Kathy Shaidle: Obama's Church ... Gospel of Hate

[A blogger since 2000, Kathy Shaidle runs FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new e-book Acoustic Ladyland has been called a "must read" by Mark Steyn.] Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a household name last month when ABC News reported on some of Wright’s inflammatory sermons. As his applauding congregation cheered him on, the former leader of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ condemned the U.S. government for “killing innocent people” and for treating Amer

Roger Pulvers: Why is there no Japanese Barack Obama?

[Roger Pulvers is an Australian author, playwright and theater director, and a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. His latest book is a collection of 12 secular bible stories, "The Honey and the Fires," from ABC Books (Australia).] Sometimes journalists ask themselves questions that appear to border on the absurd. Here goes one of them. Why is there no Japanese Barack Obama? Obama's message of "Change we can believe in" would see

Todd Crowell: McCain is a brat

[Todd Crowell is the son of a career air force officer.] Does it Matter? The presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, has embarked on a biographical tour to highlight the places and early personal experiences that have helped to shape the kind of person he is and the kind of president he might be. Everyone knows, of course, that he is the son and grandson of four-star admirals and that he had a distinguished career as a naval avi

David Treuer: If native tongues of Native Americans are lost, what remains of Indian culture?

[David Treuer is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and a translator of Ojibwe texts. His most recent novel is "The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story."] LEECH LAKE, Minn. I am not supposed to be alive. Native Americans were supposed to die off, as endangered species do, a century ago. And so it is with great discomfort that I am forced, in many ways, to live and write as a ghost in this haunted American house. But perhaps I am not

Richard Reeves: On the Matter of Torture

The order from the commander in chief regarding torture of prisoners was clear: "It has been recognized at all times that this manner of interrogating human beings, of putting them under torture, produces nothing good. The unfortunates say whatever comes into their heads, and everything they think we want to know." The commander in chief, and that was the title he preferred then, was Napoleon Bonaparte, leader of the French invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798. The tor