Roundup: Media's Take

Dean Baker: A Tax Cut Like It's 1986

[Dean Baker is economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.] In the coming two weeks, Republicans in the House and Senate desperate to pass tax cut bills will be repeating their mantra that tax cuts “stimulate growth” in the economy. Before Thanksgiving, Sen. Bill Frist and Treasury Secretary John Snow both pushed that line as they argued for tax cuts on capital gains and dividends for the rich, which would be financed by cuts in Medicaid and other prog

Matthew Penney: Are the Japanese Still Anti-War?

[Matthew Penney, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, is currently conducting research concerning popular representations of war in Japan. This article is adapted for Japan Focus from the forthcoming book Inside-Out Japan: popular culture and globalisation, edited by Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoto (Routledge).] Tahara Soichiro’s "Nihon no sengo" (Japan’s postwar), a recent work of Japanese popular history from one of the country’s best-selling and most widely re

Frank Devine: God Makes A Comeback After Generation Of Neglect

A distinctive feature of 2005 is that it has been virtually impossible to get away from religion. There's been George W. Bush urging the Chinese to tolerate it, after rather noticeably attending a Sunday service in Beijing; an archbishop delivering the Boyer lecture; and Tony Abbott constantly accused of being a Catholic. It is almost as if God has just noticed Time magazine's April 8, 1966, cover -- big red letters on a black background, asking: Is God Dead? -- and is responding wi

Bill Adair: Landmark In Abortion Law Unlikely With Current Case

The abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday was billed as a possible turning point. Groups on both sides held demonstrations outside the building. The head of NARAL Pro-Choice America called the case "monumental." After all, the court is changing. Chief Justice John Roberts took over in October after the death of William Rehnquist, and federal judge Samuel Alito has been nominated to replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor. But an hourlong ar

Max Boot: White flag Democrats

AND THE DEMOCRATS wonder why they are considered weak on national security? It's not because anyone doubts their patriotism. It's because a lot of people doubt their judgment and toughness. As if to prove the skeptics right, Democrats have been stepping forth to renounce their previous support for the liberation of Iraq even as Iraqis prepare to vote in a general election. Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards, John Murtha — that's quite a list of heavyweight flip-flopp

Trudy Rubin: White House Must Heed Murtha's Call

When historians look back at the Iraq War, they will divide it into the pre- and post-Murtha eras. Before U.S. Rep. John Murtha called on Nov. 17 for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq within the next six months, the Bush administration turned a deaf ear to all war critics, implying they were traitors. Since the hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania spoke out, President George W. Bush is extolling the need for "honest, open debate about the way forward in Iraq."

Gail Russell Chaddock: GOP's Ethics Cloud May Lead To Backlash At Polls

Had it been an isolated incident, the resignation from Congress of California Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham after he admitted taking a $2.4 million bribe might have been a blip on the way to a special election. But as yet another corruption case involving prominent members of Congress, mainly Republicans, it's fueling a scandal that is opening a window on big- money politics in Washington and shifting prospects for midterm elections. ... At least seven m

Norman Solomon: Colin Powell ... Still Craven After All These Years

Newspapers across the United States and beyond told readers Wednesday about sensational new statements by a former top assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state. After interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press reported he “said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that ‘the president of the United States is all-powerful,’ and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelev

Selwyn Parker: EU's Cutting of Sugar Subsidies Aids Australia

It took 40 years of pressure from Australia, among other nations, to make the European Union agree to cut massive subsidies to its sugar industry. But it finally happened with last week's agreement by EU agriculture ministers to end a system which has feather-bedded the sector at the expense of other major sugar-producing nations, at least since the 1960s. The decision, which was all but forced by a World Trade Organisation that had run out of patience, means that Queen

Robert Dreyfuss: Political Islam vs. Democracy

[Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, and other sites, and writes the blog, "The Dreyfuss Report," at his

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Unfettered Capitalism Can't Bring Prosperity

Decades ago, Walter Reuther, the storied head of the United Auto Workers union, was taken on a tour of an automated factory by a Ford Motor Co. executive. Somewhat gleefully, the Ford honcho told the legendary union leader: "You know, not one of these machines pays dues to the UAW." To which Reuther snapped: "And not one of them buys new Ford cars, either." The historian William L. O'Neill tells this story in "American

John O'Sullivan: Europe Must Face Ugly Truths of Communist Past

Last Friday in Warsaw the world saw for the first time exactly how the Soviet Union intended to fight a nuclear war in Europe. A top secret map for a 1979 Warsaw Pact war game -- entitled "Seven Days to the River Rhine" -- was published at a press conference that marked the opening up of the Poland's hitherto secret military intelligence files from the communist era. It was a chilling experience. The map showed large red mushroom clouds along a line going from the Danish b

Howard Kurtz: For Bob Woodward, Proximity to Power Cuts Both Ways

... In the days since the Washington Post assistant managing editor apologized to his paper for failing to reveal his role in the CIA leak controversy, Woodward, 62, has found himself under fire not just over this incident but for his very approach to journalism. His unusual relationship with The Post, and whether he hoards newsworthy material for his books, have also come under fresh scrutiny. Although he has spoken to CNN's Larry King and the Village Voice in the past week, Woodwa

Vanessa Gezari: Young Russian Activists Love Their Government

MOSCOW - The day Maxim Kuvshinov got the call that would change his life, his first question was: Where did you get my number? The girl on the other end of the line had been asking around. At the university where Maxim studies law and serves on the student council, plenty of people know him. His cell phone number is not a secret. We're creating this new movement, she said. We thought you might be interested. That's how Maxim, a smugly handsome 18-year-old w

Hector Tobar and Cecilia Sanchez: Mexico's Presidential Election Harkens Back To 1994 Race

Anyone interested in knowing how much uglier Mexico's presidential campaign could get need only travel to this city in the oil-patch state of Tabasco. People here still argue about the battle royal that Roberto Madrazo and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador waged 11 years ago in the Tabasco gubernatorial race. Now the two tabasquenos are front-runners in the three-way campaign to win the July 2006 presidential election, with ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon third in most

Ronald Brownstein: Washington Needs to Break Out Jumper Cables for Big Three

No industry did more to build the American middle class than the big domestic auto manufacturers. The rise of the automobile in the 20th century provided Americans unprecedented personal mobility. But the social mobility the industry offered may have changed the nation even more. Detroit's assembly lines not only transformed rubber and steel into Buicks and Chryslers, they also carried men with strong backs but little education -- whites and blacks, immigrants and native-born worker

Nick Turse: The Many Many People Bush Has Pushed Out of Office

[Nick Turse works in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University and is the Associate Editor and Research Director of TomDispatch.com.] Over the years, presidents who have launched illegitimate military actions and pursued ruinous policies have often left a trail of wrecked careers in their wake. While he publicly defended Lyndon Johnson's policies, Undersecretary of State George Ball privately argued against military escalation in Vietnam, eventually resigning his post i

Lawrence F. Kaplan: Liberals for Scowcroft

... Lest there be any confusion about the inclinations of the former general [Brent Scowcroft] with whom so many "progressive" voices have found common cause, his approach to foreign policy resembles that of a man who, on seeing an elderly woman being bludgeoned on the sidewalk, crosses to the other side of the street. This is the man, after all, who toasted the architects of the Tiananmen Square massacre not six months after they perpetrated it. Who found it "painful to watch Yel

Jonathan Schell: The Fall of the One-Party Empire

[Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, is the Nation Institute's Harold Willens Peace Fellow. The Jonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books.] For some time, I have been suggesting that the aim of Republican strategy has been a Republican Party that permanently runs the United States and a United States that permanently runs the world. The two aims have been driven by a common purpose: to steadily and irreversibly increase and consolidate power in Re

Max Boot: Iraq's a lost cause? Ask the real experts

WHEN IT COMES to the future of Iraq, there is a deep disconnect between those who have firsthand knowledge of the situation — Iraqis and U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq — and those whose impressions are shaped by doomsday press coverage and the imperatives of domestic politics. A large majority of the American public is convinced that the liberation of Iraq was a mistake, while a smaller but growing number thinks that we are losing and that we need to pull out soon. Those sentiments