Roundup: Media's Take

Emily Bazelon: The Bush administration's bogus use of history to defend its position on the Gitmo detainees

Every bad argument needs a good sound bite, and in that respect the Bush administration is on its game in the Guantanamo cases being argued tomorrow. Here's the shiniest nugget from the government's brief, too quotable to resist: "The detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war." The sentence basks in the glow of relativity: If the men being held

Max Boot: Sharif’s Return

The differences are greater than the similarities, but somehow the Saudi decision to send exiled politician Nawaz Sharif back to Pakistan on an airplane belonging to King Abdullah reminds me of the Germans’ decision to transport V.I. Lenin from his exile in Switzerland back to Russia in a sealed railway car in 1917. Winston Churchill famously wrote of the Germans: “It was with a sense of awe that they turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed tru

Walter Cronkite and David Krieger: Our Troops Must Leave Iraq

[Walter Cronkite is the former long-time anchor for CBS Evening News. David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.] The American people no longer support the war in Iraq. The war is being carried on by a stubborn president who, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, does not want to lose. But from the beginning this has been an ill-considered and poorly prosecuted war that, like the Vietnam War, has diminished respect for America. We bel

Gregory Rodriguez: The Puritanical roots of our fatalism and anxiety over American exceptionalism.

The sky is falling! The end is near! Just in time for the Christmas season, Pat Buchanan has published yet another jeremiad warning that America is about to go belly up. You'd think that the American public would get tired of the unrelenting gloominess of the far right and left. But you'd be wrong. Already the book is climbing up the bestseller lists, giving us further proof that, despite our collective obsession with living the good life, we Americans love the sweet rush of anxiety

Gregory Rodriguez: The Puritanical roots of our fatalism and anxiety over American exceptionalism.

The sky is falling! The end is near! Just in time for the Christmas season, Pat Buchanan has published yet another jeremiad warning that America is about to go belly up. You'd think that the American public would get tired of the unrelenting gloominess of the far right and left. But you'd be wrong. Already the book is climbing up the bestseller lists, giving us further proof that, despite our collective obsession with living the good life, we Americans love the sweet rush of anxiety

David Fiderer: Chris Matthews Rewrites History about the Clintons and the Origins of the Iraq War

[For his day job, David works at a global financial institution in New York. After his postmortem review of Enron, a company he had covered, he decided to moonlight as a freelance writer covering ethical lapses among high profile professionals in journalism and the law. He is trained as a lawyer.] On last Wednesday's Hardball, Chris Matthews asked a rhetorical question that no one answered. So I will. "I'm amazed now that Bill Clinton has come out and said he's Jer

Harry Mount: It's too bad our pols didn't take Latin (as most of our presidents have)

[Harry Mount is the author of “Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life.”] AT first glance, it doesn’t seem tragic that our leaders don’t study Latin anymore. But it is no coincidence that the professionalization of politics — which encourages budding politicians to think of education as mere career preparation — has occurred during an age of weak rhetoric, shifting moral values, clumsy grammar and a terror of historical references and eternal values that the Romans could teach u

Robert McHenry: Dear Workers: Thanks for the Cash (Re: Social Security)

[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.] Tomorrow I retire. If my financial calculations are correct, it’s for good. Of course, in making my calculations I had to guess about Social Security, which I’m not taking yet but which I assumed would be available when I decide to. I had to assume it because it has proved impossible to induce any of the present candidates for the highest office in the land to say an honest word about

Philip Dray: Noose ... The true history of a resurgent symbol of hate

[Philip Dray is the author of "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America." ] [While the strong words of disapproval greeting stories] about nooses indicate a broad intellectual recognition that the noose, a symbol of lynching, is offensive, few Americans know the full story. The lynching of black America was not an occasional or aberrational event, the momentary outburst of an angry mob, but a sustained reign of terror visited on an entire people. It t

Theo Lippmann: Political mudslinging has a long and successful history

[Theo Lippman Jr. is a retired Sun editorial writer and columnist and an author.] In the debate of Democratic presidential candidates in Nevada, Sen. Hillary Clinton rebuked John Edwards for his charge that she was "part of a corrupt political class." She said, "I don't mind taking hits on my record on issues, but when somebody starts throwing mud, at least we can hope that it's both accurate and out of the Republican playbook." Ahh, mud. Where would

Matt Carr: The parallels between Anarchism and al-Qaeda today

[Matt Carr is an author and journalist. His book The Infernal Machine: a History of Terrorism from the Assassination of Tsar Alexander II to Al-Qaeda is published by The New Press.] It has become something of a cliché to claim that the world has changed irrevocably in response to the unique and deadly threat of al-Qaeda. But if the current crisis appears unprecedented, its essential parameters are not entirely new. The spectre of violent nihilists intent on the destruction of civili

Jim Castagnera: The Ancient Order of Hibernians: From the Molly Maguires to Malachy McAllister

[Jim Castagnera, formerly of Jim Thorpe, is the Associate Provost/Associate Counsel at Rider University. His new novel, Ned McAdoo and the Molly Maguires,” is available at www.lulu.com.]       “What do you know about the AOH?” I asked my pal Ned McAdoo during one of our regular Friday lunches, this one appropriately enough at Maggie O’Neil’s Pub in the Pilgrim Gardens Shopping Center in Drexel Hill. 

Dick Morris: Mike Huckabee is a fiscal conservative

As Mike Huckabee rises in the polls, an inevitable process of vetting him for conservative credentials is under way in which people who know nothing of Arkansas or of the circumstances of his governorship weigh in knowingly about his record. As his political consultant in the ea rly ’90s and one who has been following Arkansas politics for 30 years, let me clue you in: Mike Huckabee is a fiscal conservative. A recent column by Bob Novak excoriated Huckabee for a “47 percent increase

Media Matters: Bill Clinton opposed the Iraq War from the start

The November 28 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe featured a discussion of former President Bill Clinton's November 27 comment that he"opposed [the war in] Iraq from the beginning," which contributor Willie Geist called"revisionist history." Similarly, in a November 28"On Deadline"

Dick Morris: Hillary will go negative now

As her once-formidable lead in national polls dwindles and Barack Obama moves ahead of her in the all-important Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton will likely intensify her negative campaign against her rivals. The Clintons' political MO has always had a good dose of negative campaigning, especially when the going gets rough. There's no reason to assume that they will alter their game plan now.... How will they do it? Their favored method of getting out

Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz: How the World Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb

[Douglas Frantz, the former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, is a senior writer at Conde Nast Portfolio. Catherine Collins, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, is now a Washington-based writer. They are co-authors of The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets… and How We Could Have Stopped Him (Twelve, 2007).] Glo

Vincent Rossmeier: The Republicans who would've impeached Bush?

[Vincent Rossmeier is a graduate student in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program in New York University's Journalism School, and a research assistant for Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald.] During the past six years, leading Republicans in Congress have prioritized allegiance to a Republican president above all other governmental and constitutional concerns. But there was a time when U.S. lawmakers, regardless of party affiliation, actually voted the way of their conscience.

Media Matters: California would still be mostly ignored by presidential candidates even if electoral votes were awarded by district

Summary: Reporting on a Republican-backed California ballot initiative that would award the state's electoral votes by congressional district, NPR correspondent Ina Jaffe aired an audio clip of Republican consultant Dave Gilliard, who asserted:"We want [presidential candidates] to come out here and actually campaign throughout California. We want them to go to the Central Valley, and Inland Empire, and the North Coast, and talk to Californians about what's important to

Robert McHenry: Political Labels ... Are You a Right-Wing &#!@% or a Left-Wing &#!@%?

[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.] As part of Britannica Blog’s continuing service to those readers who insist on declining to ignore the presidential campaign, herewith a guide to some basic political nomenclature. Use at your own risk. Charles de Gaulle is supposed to have asked the rhetorical question “How can you govern a country that has 246 [or, in other versions, 265, or 300, or 365] kinds of cheese

Mark Matthews: The troubled search for peace in the Middle East

[Mark Matthews, former diplomatic and Middle East correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of "Lost Years: Bush, Sharon and Failure in the Middle East."] President Bush's father liked to quote the Woody Allen line that 90 percent of life is just showing up. In fact, George H.W. Bush's signal achievement in Middle East diplomacy came from persuading leaders and representatives from Israel and much of the Arab world to show up for a peace conference in Madrid at th