Roundup: Media's Take

Mar 5, 2004

Sri Lanka: Why It's a Mess Again

Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant & Joanne D. Eisen, in National Review (March 3, 2004): Sri Lanka is technically in a state of civil war. It is just barely held together by a tenuous ceasefire that is splintering day by day, threatening to dash the hopes of a country that yearns for peace. Last month, Presid

Mar 5, 2004

Why the Karbala Bombings During Ashoura So Shocked the Shia of Iraq

Paul Vallely, in the London Independent (March 3, 2004):IT IS as if bombs had been placed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Good Friday - with a few more for good measure at the Vatican and in Canterbury Cathedral. Yet even that comparison fails to convey the outrageous and sacrilegious impact of the blasts that killed scores of Iraqi Shia worshippers yesterday as they celebrated Ashoura, their most holy ritual of th

Mar 5, 2004

John Kerry: What His Record Says About Him

Gail Russell Chaddock, in the Christian Science Monitor (March 3, 2004):In high-profile probes, he's built a record that some see as grandstanding, others as boring in on core questions. One criticism of John Kerry's early Senate investigations was that, in his own words, they "looked at strange and nefarious types that people did not take seriously." On Oct. 24, 1991, that rap ended. On the other side of the witness ta

Mar 5, 2004

Bush and Kerry Offer the American People the Starkest Contrast Since Hoover and FDR

Liz Marlantes, Noel Paul, and Sara B. Miller, writing for the Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA) (March 4, 2004)Kerry and Bush will bring different styles, ideologies, and issues to a divisive race. With the matchup between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush now assured, the stage is set for what observers believe could rank among the most classic - and potentially divisive - confrontations in dec

Mar 4, 2004

Stephen Gillers: Bill Clinton for Vice President!

Law professor Stephen Gillers, in the NYT (March 3, 2004):With John Edwards's decision to quit the race, expected to be announced officially today, John Kerry's nomination as the Democratic candidate for president is secure. Speculation about his choice for vice president can now begin in earnest. Mr. Edwards himself is an obvious choice: a skilled camp

Mar 4, 2004

Peggy Noonan: Is Kerry Trying to Look and Sound Like JFK?

Peggy Noonan, in the WSJ (March 4, 2004): Mr. Kerry seems to me not a man of deep belief but of a certain amount of sentiment and calculation. One has the sense he is a liberal Democrat because of the time and place in which he was born, that he inhaled a worldview as opposed to struggling through to one. I have been wondering how much of Mr. Kerry's career is an essentially unreflective me

Mar 4, 2004

Was the Bush Administration Out to Depose Aristide from the Time It Took Power?

Paul Reybnolds, in the BBC News (March 3, 2004): The role played by the United States in the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti shows that Uncle Sam still wants to keep things quiet in his backyard. The precise circumstances of Mr Aristide's leaving may be debated. He says that he was in effect forced from office, having been warned that thousands would die, including himself maybe,

Mar 4, 2004

Haiti's History and Our Own Are Intertwined

Columnist Jerry Large, in the Seattle Times (March 4, 2004): Our history and Haiti's are intertwined, and our fates could easily have been different. A turn down one path, and Haiti might have become a thriving democracy. A turn down another path, and the United States might have been just a small neighbor of the French Empire.

Mar 4, 2004

John Kerry: On the Losing Side of History

David Freddoso, in Human Events (March 4, 2004): The Cold War and the ominous threat of Communist expansion are long over. Still, Americans should start thinking about communism again. Why dig up the past? Because our current enemy--loosely organized Islamic radicalism--is not nearly as serious a threat as the one Sen. John F. Kerry (D.-Mass.), pooh-poohed under questioning from the Senate Foreign

Mar 4, 2004

Kerry in Congress: An Investigator's Rise

Gail Russell Chaddock, writing for the Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA) (March 3, 2004)One criticism of John Kerry's early Senate investigations was that, in his own words, they"looked at strange and nefarious types that people did not take seriously." On Oct. 24, 1991, that rap ended.On the other side of the witness table in the vast Hart Senate hearing room was seated Washin

Mar 4, 2004

Teddy Roosevelt Also Asked Congress to Add a Marriage Amendment-The Answer Was No

Scripps Howard, writing for the Newsday (New York) (March 2, 2004)WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush isn't the first to come up with the idea of a marriage amendment to the Constitution.Theodore Roosevelt proposed a similar amendment in 1906, saying Congress should be given authority to set national marriage and divorce standards.Historian Kathleen Dal

Mar 4, 2004

In 1994 We Saved Aristide's Government ... Now in 2004 We Ended It

Joanne Mariner, a FindLaw columnist and human rights attorney, in Findlaw.com (March 1, 2004): Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president of Haiti until yesterday, has ceded power. Pressed to resign by the U.S. and French governments, and facing a threatened rebel assault on Port-au-Prince, Aristide was flown out of the country early Sunday morning. By the end of the day, the U.S. had already sent the first mi

Mar 4, 2004

Is What Has Happened to Argentina an Ominous Warning to Us All?

Jim Straub, an organizer based in Richmond, VA, in TomDispatch.com (March 2, 2004):In 1999, the global justice movement first captured mainstream attention in the U.S. when, on the streets of Seattle, it protested and shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization. The motley, if energetic, collection of groups ranging from environmentalists to trade unions to anarchi

Mar 3, 2004

What Greenspan Forgot to Mention When He Talked About Cutting Social Security Benefits

David Cay Johnston, in the NYT (Feb. 29, 2004): Social Security retirement benefits are going to have to be cut, Alan Greenspan announced last week, because there just is not enough money to pay the promised benefits. President Bush said those already retired or"near retirement age'' should not worry. They will get their promised benefits. That, in short form, was the

Mar 3, 2004

Was John Kerry a Radical War Protester?

Todd Purdum, in the NYT (Feb. 28, 2004): On April 22, 1971, John Kerry , a decorated 27-year-old Navy veteran of two tours in Vietnam, electrified the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with his passionate testimony against the war, and with tales from fellow veterans a

Feb 29, 2004

Papers of Roe-Wade Author to Be Released

David G. Savage, writing for the Los Angeles Times (Feb. 29, 2004)The ghost of Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun will be back in the news this week, five years after his death and more than 30 years after he wrote the momentous and still-disputed Roe vs. Wade opinion that legalized abortion.His reputation in life was controversial. Liberals saw him as a conservative Midwestern Republican who grew in his job to become

Feb 28, 2004

Andrew Sullivan: Other States Wouldn't Have to Recognize a Gay Marriage License Issued by Massachusetts

Andrew Sullivan, on his blog (Feb. 27, 2004): There is, alas, one simple factual problem in Charles Krauthammer's thoughtful piece today. It is the following assertion: [B]ecause of the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution (which makes every state accept"the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State"), gay marriage can be imposed on the entire country by a bare majority of the state supreme court of but one state. This in a c

Feb 27, 2004

John Kerry Covered Up Evidence of P.O.W.'s Left Behind in Vietnam

Sidney Schanberg, in the Village Voice (Feb. 24, 2004): Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after

Feb 27, 2004

Black History Is Rated "X"

Attorney Heather Bolejack, in the Indianapolis Star (Feb. 27, 2004): I thought I was a"n----r" when I was in kindergarten because my classmates told me so. As a biracial child, I thought I was"part slave" in the fourth grade because the teacher and textbooks taught me that all black people were slaves until Harriet Tubman, the abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln"set us free." In fifth

Feb 27, 2004

John Kerry: The Winter Soldier Investigation's Made-Up Claims

Joel Mowbray, in frontpagemag.com (Feb. 24, 2004): After the media tore into President Bush's 30-year-old National Guard record like a rabid pit bull into a bacon-scented postman, Democrats have been licking their chops in anticipation of highlighting John Kerry's decorated service during the same time period. A new web site that launched yesterday (Monday, January 23), however, should g