113 articles
IS SOMALIA NEXT? Reports from the region suggest U.S. Special Forces teams have been in the Somali countryside scouting possible al Qaeda sanctuaries and drumming up local support. Yet the mere suggestion our troops could go back into that wasp's nest provokes anxiety. Some of the U.S. military's…
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Tom Daschle never had it so good. For weeks, the White House made concession after concession on an economic stimulus package and Daschle pocketed them without making concessions of his own. In the House, Republicans passed a stimulus bill that Democrats ridiculed and even…
IN THE AFTERMATH of September 11, the rulers or cabinet ministers of Iran, Malaysia, Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia urged America to focus on the "root causes of terrorism." A good case can be made, however, that they themselves are the "root cause." The fact that the September 11…
IN RESPONSE TO SEPTEMBER 11, people from many walks of life performed their jobs with spirit and guts and aplomb. Exhibiting a high degree of seriousness and professionalism, the police and the firefighters, the doctors and nurses, the ground zero construction crews and the media, the mayor and the…
SELECTIVE INDIGNATION IN OUR TIME Arco Arena in Sacramento is one noisy place, as anyone who has ever watched a Sacramento Kings game can attest. So it had to be unpleasant for Sacramento Bee publisher Janis Besler Heaphy when the families and friends of California State University grads brought…
Secret Knowledge Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters by David Hockney Viking, 296 pp., $60 WHEN David Hockney shared his hunches about optics and art history with the New Yorker nearly two years ago --which reported them with some (but not enough) skepticism--did he imagine the…
PRESIDENT BUSH has described the struggle against terrorism in which we are engaged as the first war of the twenty-first century. Presumably he means more by that designation than a nod to the calendar. He is also referring to a new kind of war. But what kind? Well, the novelty is that the United…
IN EARLY DECEMBER, President Bush had to decide what to do about Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui is the French citizen of Moroccan descent who entered the United States back in February. On August 16, having aroused suspicions at a flight school in Minnesota, he was detained on visa violation…
THE ROAD BETWEEN Poso and Tentena on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi runs past burned-out homes, stores, and churches, and is blocked by checkpoints adorned with pictures of Osama bin Laden. Some have signs proclaiming him "our leader." Islamic militias stop vehicles and check identity papers.…
AN ARTICLE in a recent issue of the Women's Quarterly bemoans the absence of the teaching of handwriting in schools, pointing out that this is especially a hardship on young boys. Handwriting apparently comes less easily for boys than it does for girls. "Boys are graphologically challenged," the…
CRITICS HAVE NEVER cared much for Charlie Chan, but the portly Chinese-American detective has been a favorite for three-quarters of a century. Detective-Sergeant Charlie Chan of the Honolulu police became a globally recognized figure through the five novels Earl Derr Biggers published between 1925…
"GOD BLESS AMERICA." These words have been repeated millions of times since September 11. They have echoed in countless stadiums across the country, been sung by a bipartisan group of congressmen on the Capitol steps, appeared on hundreds of thousands of yard signs, bumper stickers, and billboards.…
Tolkien, the Book Rereading Lord of the Rings by J. Bottum THE ENDLESS TALK about "The Lord of the Rings" almost--almost--convinces me to see the movie. We live in the highest age of moviemaking, and J.R.R. Tolkien was unfilmable in any convincing way before computer-aided techniques came along.…
I'VE BEEN AMUSING myself recently with the following experiment: I call up the most strident anti-police activists of recent years, people like Georgetown law professor David Cole, who argues that every aspect of the criminal justice system is racist. I ask these police critics the following…
IS THERE a starker contrast than the one between the glorious triumph of American arms abroad and the grubby selfishness of our politics at home? While American soldiers, seamen, and pilots risk their lives in and around Afghanistan, while the American people rally around their nation's cause with…
SALT LAKE CITY is calmly preparing to host the Olympic games this February. In the aftermath of September 11, Mitt Romney, chairman of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, refused even to consider canceling the games. On September 12 he told the Salt Lake Tribune, "As a testament to the courage of the…
[img nocaption float="right" width="144" height="194" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8795[/img]Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse Overlook, 224 pp., $ 15.95 The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse Overlook, 220 pp., $ 15.95 Pigs Have Wings by P. G. Wodehouse Overlook, 230 pp., $ 15.95…
[img caption="From the November 24, 1997 issue." float="right" width="144" height="193" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8793[/img]TERRY SCHWALIER was what the warrior class calls a fast burner. He had zipped through the Air Force ranks and was about to pin on his second star, making him a major…
SQUELCHING A FAVORABLE REPORT For the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Record report was a huge headache. The reason Record was given so much time, says a source involved in the process, was not so he could be thorough but to ensure the report came out after the election. The political…
[img nocaption float="right" width="144" height="193" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8794[/img]IT'S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE not to know how it opens. "Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that." Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" has been filmed at least forty-two times and…
IN PAST ERAS of moviemaking, it was possible to combine great entertainment with a moral agenda--matching riveting action with a serious inquiry into contemporary events. But, beginning in the 1960s, Hollywood was transformed, first by counterculture chic and then by political correctness. For…
LAST WEEK the White House made a down payment on President Bush's promise that due-process protections would be extended even to the most fanatic current enemies of U.S. policy. No, we don't mean the Justice Department's December 11 indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "twentieth man" in…
BIN LADEN'S WEAK HORSE The new bin Laden video has been so thoroughly chewed over by the commentariat that The Scrapbook has only a couple of points to make. First, the tape was much more effective at strengthening the convictions of those who had already grasped bin Laden's depravity than at…
WHEN SENATOR PATRICK Leahy gaveled the Judiciary Committee to order on Monday, December 10, he began by marshalling several excuses for his inaction on President Bush's judicial nominees. Actually, to be precise, he first denied that Senate Democrats were holding up Bush's nominations. Then he…
Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga Oxford Universiy Press, 576 pp., $24.95 Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology by Nicholas Wolterstorff Cambridge University Press, 627 pp., $54.95 WHAT ACCOUNTS for the surprising upturn of interest in philosophy of religion in major American…
The Skeptical Environmentalist Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg Cambridge University Press, 540 pp., $69.95 IN 1997, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish professor of statistics and a self-professed "old left-wing Greenpeace member," came across a book by Julian Simon, one of the great…
THESE SPOILED-ROTTEN KIDS today, with their stadium seating and Dolby Digital sound, not to mention the cappuccino at the concession stand and the ticket-takers who thank you for coming and the ushers who give you a nice mint as you leave. Will they ever know the sacrifices we older moviegoers once…
FORT BRAGG, N.C. Despite the low-rent ambiance of Bragg Blvd.--the land of Park'n'Pawns and $1.99 fried chicken plates--Fort Bragg has always been synonymous with the Army's elite. Arriving at the home of the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces, visitors often experience the contact-buzz that comes…
GENERAL NIZAR AL-KHAZRAJI, chief of staff of Saddam Hussein's army when Iraq invaded Kuwait, lives in a suburb of Copenhagen called Soroe. There, four Danish police officers guard him round-the-clock, while the Danish Ministry of Justice investigates his role in massacres against the Kurds over 13…
CRITICS of the U.S. war in Afghanistan have been wrong about virtually everything. They predicted that a Soviet-style quagmire awaited American troops; that chaos on the ground would turn millions of Afghans into refugees; and that tens of thousands of civilians would be killed by errant U.S.…
IF YOU THOUGHT the $15 billion airline bailout bill was a bloated corporate welfare handout, wait till you see what Congress has planned for Amtrak. In the wake of September 11, with the airlines in precarious financial condition, the government-operated passenger rail service is now regarded on…
This essay is reprinted in The Best Christian Writing 2002, edited by John Wilson (HarperSan Francisco).
PRESIDENT BUSH was in a pleading mood. The occasion was his weekly White House breakfast with congressional leaders. His remarks were pointed at Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Please don't load up the defense appropriations bill with billions of extra spending for "homeland security," as Sen.…
BOOKS IN BRIEF Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, 123 pp., $14.95). Here are some instructions for reading "Holidays on Ice": Rip out pages 45 through 123 and use them as coasters while you read the remaining essay. Actually, the other five pieces in David Sedaris's collection are…
LONDON SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, British prime minister Tony Blair has enjoyed, in the eyes of Americans, his finest hour. His appearance in the Capitol gallery during President Bush's war address to a joint session of Congress marked a spirit of U.S.-British cooperation and goodwill that recalled the…
IN MATTHEW'S GOSPEL, some wise men in the East see Jesus's star and evidently interpret it as a sign of the birth of the promised King of Judah. They follow the star all the way to Jerusalem and ask where the newborn is. "We have come to worship him," they say. Herod, King of the Jews, gets word of…
THE OTHER DAY I reported that Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's magazine, was angry at America. His writings following September 11 show he is really pissed off that three airplanes should be hijacked and crashed, the Twin Towers should be reduced to rubble, a massive bite should be taken out of…
SNOBBERY is an ugly thing. The women's television network Oxygen ran an ad in the business section of Wednesday's New York Times. The body of the ad purported to be a series of quotations from made-up middle American newspapers about Oxygen's programming. "Too urban" said "Smalltown News." "Too…
AT A TIME when college professors all across America are going hoarse complaining about diminished academic freedom and "chilling effects," a small group of teachers at Orange Coast College in southern California is applauding the crackdown on free speech.
A PROPOSED admissions policy change at Texas A&M University is rapidly devolving into a squabble over what constitutes racial preferences. Student leaders and anti-preference activists charge that the A&M regents' plan to admit the top 20 percent of high school seniors from some of Texas's poorly…
THE LEAD STORY in the November issue of Harper's was an essay by its editor Lewis Lapham. He'd been, before September 11, to a screening of "Band of Brothers," the Steven Spielberg-produced World War II series on HBO. And he didn't like the experience, not one bit. "Agitprop," he called the show.…
"PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA," Adolf Hitler once wrote, "all that matters is propaganda." When it came to employing propaganda, the Fuehrer was obviously on board. Dedicating two chapters of "Mein Kampf" to the subject, the patron of the art that brought us Leni Riefenstal and Joe Goebbels…
WE'RE NOT LIVING in a golden age of cinema. Most years there are fewer than ten good movies made and great movies are even scarcer. There are many reasons for this, but I blame the "Waterworld" effect. In 1995, Kevin Costner's "Waterworld," a cross between "The Road Warrior" and Pirates of the…
HERE'S AN INTERESTING FACT that explains a lot: President Bush has actually gotten less coverage on the network TV evening news shows since September 11 than before. That's right, 38 percent less coverage. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell have taken up much of…
SEVEN OUT OF TEN of the least-free countries in the world have Islamic majorities. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan join Burma, Cuba, and North Korea in the dubious distinction of achieving the lowest possible ratings in the latest global survey of political…
[img caption="Photo by Kevin Frayer of the Canadian Press, via the AP." float="right" width="432" height="328" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8792[/img]DO YOU see what I see? Look carefully at the photo above, which ran in Monday's Washington Post. It was taken by Kevin Frayer of the Canadian Press…
IN 1951, the literary critic Alfred Kazin published a schmaltzily sentimental memoir called "Walker in the City" in which he was able to demonstrate his sensitivity and superiority to his family, his friends, and his contemporaries. I have myself become a walker outside the city, with none of the…
The Assassin's Cloak An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists edited by Irene and Alan Taylor Canongate, 684 pp., $35 AN ANTHOLOGY of diary entries may seem a silly idea, rather like an anthology of everything. But, in fact, diaries are not infinitely varied. Some are to-do lists in living…
IN TESTIMONY before the Senate last July, Dr. Michael West, president of Advanced Cell Technology and lead scientist on the team that recently cloned the first human embryos, quoted Scripture: As the Apostle Paul said: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a…
Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour Grove Press, 655 pp., $35 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN SHELLEY clinched her name in history at the very beginning of her womanhood. She was born in 1797 and at the age of sixteen, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley. At the age of nineteen she wrote "Frankenstein."…
FREE GENE SCALIA!
ON NOVEMBER 29, Attorney General John Ashcroft introduced President Bush to an audience of the nation's 94 U.S. attorneys. Bush began his remarks by commending Ashcroft for "principled" and "steady" leadership. "I guess we call you General," he said. Then, turning to the U.S. attorneys, he added,…
WORD HAS IT that a leading California Republican has devised the perfect slogan for GOP frontrunner Richard Riordan's gubernatorial campaign: "More Conservative Than Bloomberg." To many California conservatives, that may be optimistic. Badly in need of a win next year after three straight losing…
LAST WEEK President Bush made a long-overdue decision. He ordered the closing of the Holy Land Foundation, a front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, headquartered in Richardson, Texas, with branch offices in Paterson, N.J., Bridgeview, Ill., and San Diego. The Holy War Foundation would be…
AT FIRST GLANCE, the struggle between the Justice Department and Oregon over that state's assisted suicide law looks like a classic confrontation between federal power and states' rights. In a letter dated November 6, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered federal drug enforcement agents to go…
MORE THAN TWO MONTHS after the terrorist attacks that took the lives of 4,000 people, and ripped up the lives of ten times that number, leftists in this country have found victims to cry for: themselves. It seems they are being suppressed, by a reign of terror. Exhibit A in the tale of this great…
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pp., $25 MARIO VARGAS LLOSA'S "The Feast of the Goat" portrays in stark terms the thirty-one-year reign over the Dominican Republic by General Rafael Trujillo, the man known as the Goat. In alternating chapters, the novel…
In the Arena A Memoir of the 20th Century by Caspar W. Weinberger, with Gretchen Roberts Regnery, 412 pp., $34.95 WHEN I OPENED Caspar Weinberger's memoir, an irresistible impulse propelled me to the chapter describing his outrageous persecution in 1992 by Lawrence Walsh, the out-of-control…
CHRISTMAS BOOKS IN BRIEF Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages selected by Harold Bloom (Scribner, 570 pp., $27.50) What is Bloom up to? Every time he publishes a book of nutty postmodernness, he follows it with a book so old-fashioned it's positively premodern. He's…
Yeats Is Dead! A Mystery by 15 Irish Writers edited by Joseph O'Connor Knopf, 256 pp., $23 Naked Came the Phoenix edited by Marcia Talley Minotaur, 320 pp., $24.95 Natural Suspect devised by William Bernhardt Ballantine, 192 pp., $23.95 A MULTIPLE-AUTHOR NOVEL is the equivalent of an old-time…
OF ALL the myriad criticisms lately leveled against President Bush's November 13 "military tribunals" order, the most wonderful--for pure dishonesty--is the indignation expressed over the directive's alleged denigration of regular Pentagon legal work. What the president has proposed "bear[s] scant…
FOR THE LAST FEW WEEKS, the Philippine military has intensified its campaign against Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic separatist group holding three hostages, two of them American, deep in the jungles of Basilan island. There are currently 7,000 soldiers on Basilan, roughly 600 miles south of Manila, and…
MY RECENT ARTICLE comparing the AK-47 to the M-16 has elicited a substantial number of personal anecdotes, expert opinions, and gun-nut testimonials. Readers seem split when it comes to which assault rifle they prefer. One Vietnam vet suggests he's been spoiled by the M-16 and finds the AK-47…
IT'S BEEN a hell of a week:
EIGHTY-TWO DAYS after being suspended from teaching, Kenneth W. Hearlson has been vindicated. Sort of.
AN "ARTCORE" movie may be hard to define, but you'll know one when you see it at the local art house. Unbearably ponderous, these movies can mope along on almost nothing. For action, they show long-faced characters silently brushing their teeth. For repartee, they have chain-smoking lovers…
ON WEDNESDAY, I was invited to a panel discussion hosted by Harper's magazine to discuss issues relating to press coverage of the war on terrorism. This is being written before that panel--but I've been reading up on the matter all afternoon, and I can't for the life of me figure out what we're…
PRESS COVERAGE of yesterday's speech by President Bush at the Citadel focused on military reform. Press coverage of the president's decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty stressed U.S.-Russian relations. Neither of these issues is unimportant. But one conclusion that underlies both the…
GEORGE W. BUSH was sworn in almost ten months ago, yet it's remarkable how his presidency has completely changed directions. I don't mean it's changed politically. Rather, it's changed in terms of its preoccupations. It has gone from being a domestic-policy presidency to one centered on foreign…
IT TURNS OUT that my catalogue of John Philip Walker Lindh's newsgroups postings was incomplete. Kind readers have sent me other e-mail aliases that he used. The most striking posting is this rap, penned when he was 14-years-old, which Cornel West may want to cover for his next CD.
RECENTLY Fred Barnes reported that the film industry is not overly eager to enlist in the war effort. Studios have produced patriotic, "America-the-Beautiful" public service announcements, now showing after the trailers at theaters everywhere, but how Hollywood responds content-wise--if at all--to…
GEORGE SALEM'S law firm has chosen not to represent the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development as the group fights the Bush administration's decision last Tuesday to shut it down. Salem and his firm had previously represented Holy Land in a suit filed by the Boim family after their son was…
WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH disavowed the Holy Land Foundation last week, he said that the foundation's actions were "an affront to millions of Muslim Americans." The New York Times says there are "six to seven million Muslims living in this country." Most other newspapers and wire services report the same…
IN THE WAKE of September 11, what can a psychiatrist contribute to America's defense? Nothing, of course, to defend the nation from bombs, but something perhaps to defend it against confusion--and here America certainly needs help. At the University of Pennsylvania, the provost called several…
"We are going into this war lightly," I.F. Stone wrote in the Nation on December 8, 1941. The editors of Life magazine agreed. "Americans took the news, good and bad, with admirable serenity," they wrote in their first post-Pearl Harbor edition. And it's true. If you look through American magazines…
IN RECENT YEARS, "neglected women writers" have been much in vogue, with publishers bringing out series after series of them. Yet Dorothy Osborne, the most remarkable of that company, has been overlooked by literary archaeologists--and it is a scandal that her work is not more widely available.…
AS SECRETARY OF STATE Colin Powell makes his way to Moscow this week, he will no doubt seek to follow up on issues discussed at the Bush-Putin summit last month in Crawford, Texas. High on the agenda will be nuclear proliferation to and by Iran. The Bush administration is developing a deal under…
AMERICAN JOURNALISTS TYPICALLY regard their British counterparts with a mixture of pity and disdain. Fleet Streeters, so the stereotype goes, tend to be thieving, dipsomaniac fabulists: quick to sensationalize, slow to fact-check, more likely to hoist a pint than a phone. But I actually think this…
The Columnist by Jeffrey Frank Simon & Schuster, 237 pp., $22 The Grim Pig by Charles Gordon McClelland & Stewart, 259 pp., $24.95 ANYONE WITH AN INTEREST in the popular press will probably have ferreted out a few unfortunate truths about journalists: that they occasionally get their facts wrong,…
ON WEDNESDAY, November 28, two days after the U.S. economy was officially declared to be in recession, George W. Bush issued an impassioned and persuasive plea to Congress to send him "a significant package of tax cuts" that he could sign into law by Christmas. It was a terrific speech. Bush…
THE BIRDMAN OF BAGHDAD The official Iraqi line, parroted by peace groups, goes like this: U.S.-led sanctions are killing Iraqis--some 1.5 million since the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein wants the sanctions lifted because he cares deeply about the suffering of innocent Iraqis. "The U.S., along with its…
MY TORY FRIENDS have become very worried--angry even--about British prime minister Tony Blair's newfound popularity in America. What especially grates on them is that Blair is now admired by American conservatives, the last Tory constituency of any value. "It won't last, you know," they tell me,…
AT THE BASE of the flagpole that marks the beginning of Disneyland's Main Street in Anaheim, California, rests an unobtrusive plaque. It reads: "Disneyland is youth land. Here age relives fond memories of the past and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is…
ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government faced an array of internal enemies. These included aliens and Americans of German, Italian, and Japanese ancestry. The Roosevelt administration's handling of Japanese Americans--some 120,000 were sent to…
THE WUBBULOUS WORLD OF OPERA The scathing reviews of the New York City Opera's premiere of "Lilith" are a sign of just how bad it was: There's so little new opera that reviewers long to praise. But maybe the company should have seen disaster coming. Composer Deborah Drattell explained she was…
ONE INDICATION that the phenomenon of music over the Internet will soon be completely corporatized is the note on the Napster website: "You have the power to keep file-sharing over the Internet alive. Washington insiders should never win out over the will of the people. Contact Congress by email to…
AROUND THANKSGIVING--under a headline in the New York Times that read "24 Cow Clones, All Normal, Are Reported by Scientists: A Challenge to Arguments Against Human Cloning"--a company called Advanced Cell Technology announced that there was no need to fear cloning, for it had succeeded in…
ANYONE WHO HASN'T been hiding in a cave with Osama since September is probably suffering from a surfeit of "How the World Has Changed" journalism. Much of it has been pabulum, but I confess that I find one genre fascinating: the articles about how everyday Americans are coping with calamity through…
FROM AUGUST 1995 to August 1997, John Philip Walker Lindh, the Marin County jihadist, was a frequent contributor to Internet newsgroups. As Newsweek reports in its latest issue, he used the nom de plume "doodoo."
From: "doodoo@hooked.net" Subject: WTB: HEIL TALKBOX Date: 1997/03/13 Organization: Hooked Online Services Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.marketplace I'm looking for a talkbox, new or used. Please contact the address below. Thank you. John Lindh doodoo@hooked.net From: "Hine E. Craque" Subject: WTB:…
IF YOU'RE WONDERING just how cool "Ocean's Eleven," Warner Brothers' remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film, is, simply go to their website. Everything you need to know before watching the movie (or writing a review) can be found here. You can spend hours going through videos, trailers, interviews, and…
THE INTERNET has had a good war. Every day I find truckloads of absolutely essential information as I do my early afternoon web surfing. I start with The Weekly Standard website (modesty forbids me from touting my own colleagues' work), then I move on to harvest the daily thoughts of two people who…
ON NOVEMBER 29, the Japanese government's council for science and technology policy announced that Japan would allow human cells to be implanted into fertilized animal eggs for research purposes. Our old nightmares had it wrong. This is really how the apocalypse begins: with a minor announcement at…
TWO CASES making their way through courts in Europe are symptomatic of a heightened interest in war crimes. They illustrate two contrasting approaches to reckoning with the past. In Paris, an 83-year-old general and his publisher are on trial for statements in his memoir defending his actions in…
IT REACHED ITS PEAK in the early '90s, when Amy Fisher shot Mrs. Joey Buttafuoco: the decades-long transformation of Long Island into a laughingstock. The setting for "The Great Gatsby" became known as a cultural valley of the ashes, home to loud girls with big hair and the Guidos who married them.…
JUST HOURS AFTER President Bush shut down the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development because of its support of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, his energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, co-hosted a fly-by photo-op with the group's lawyer, George Salem. That encounter was one…
TOM DASCHLE, the Senate majority leader, says President Bush is handling the economy poorly. His evidence? The White House now projects budget deficits for the next several years. Representative Nita Lowey of New York, who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, labels the economic…
WITH THREE MONTHS DOWN on the Christmas season (which, in some shopping malls, has been on since Labor Day), it is time to begin deciding what not to buy your children. Every year, it seems, there is a raft of horrible toy ideas. One year, it was the Cabbage Patch Snacktime doll, which was supposed…
IN THIS WEEK'S Newsweek we learn that American Taliban is no longer just a figure of speech. Colin Soloway reports that one of the 86 survivors of the Mazar-i-Sharif prison uprising, a filthy looking jihadist going by the name "Abdul Hamid," is actually "a white, apparently middle-class American, a…
LONDON IN LONDON'S GUARDIAN last month, Seumas Milne decried the war in Afghanistan as a "cruel absurdity"--an assault on "one of the poorest and most ruined countries in the world by the planet's richest and most powerful state." Now that the war against the Taliban looks like a rout, the numerous…
THE RUBBLE from the World Trade Center was still burning when the first so-called peace protesters took to the streets more than two months ago. Anxious to emulate the powerful coalition that pressured the United States to abandon Indochina three decades earlier, they would have us believe that our…
IN HER RECENT not-quite-a-memoir, "An Old Wife's Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War," the great social critic Midge Decter gives an episodic account of her life as a New York intellectual and devotes more space, as it turns out, to discussing her children than her books. What kind of social…
LIKE THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS in the 1980s and the Soccer Moms in the 1990s, the most sought after vote bloc in the coming decade will be what you might call the Latin Swing--upwardly mobile Latino voters who are not the loyal Democrats many people assume they are. Latinos have grown from 2 percent of…
A RUMOR HAS BEEN CIRCULATING in intelligence circles that communications intercepted prior to September 11 referred in Arabic to a "Christmas gift" for the United States. What no one listening to these messages realized was that the same expression can mean "an unpleasant exploding surprise." This…
The Implosion of American Federalism by Robert F. Nagel Oxford University Press, 209 pp., $35 THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM, like other wars before it, will enhance respect for the national government and increase its growth. That prediction, and the corollary prediction of federalism's demise, unites…
AFGHAN LEADERS vying for control of their country have been dragooned into working with the United Nations in an effort to craft a transitional government. The comparison being drawn most often--by a host of American and British officials, and by U.N. secretary generalKofi Annan--is to the U.N.…
IT IS NOW a virtually unquestioned assumption of American elite conversation that the law enforcement measures George W. Bush has adopted in the aftermath of September 11 make him, as the New York Times matter-of-factly reports, "only the latest of many presidents to restrict civil liberties in…
IN THE WEEKS after September 11, religious leaders and media commentators marveled that young Americans were turning to religion in droves. In Manhattan, fewer than two dozen participants were expected at a Rosh Hashana service in TriBeCa; an estimated 400 showed up, most in their 20s and 30s. At…
"YOU KNOW WHY WE LOST?" a red-faced Henry accusingly asked me. This was four seasons ago, after my first game coaching the Black Bats, a soccer team of 5-year-olds, and, as matter of fact, I hadn't a clue why we lost. But before Henry could finish, John Edwin interrupted. "What are Black Bats…
SEATTLE FIVE YEARS AGO, Seattle was riding so high on its tech sector that Newsweek's cover announced: "Everyone else is moving there. Should you?" But the intervening years have tarnished this once golden city. The police inaction that allowed the WTO riots, and the brutal police response that…
It Ain't Necessarily So How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality by David Murray, Joel Schwartz, and S. Robert Lichter Rowman & Littlefield, 249 pp., $24.95 Bias A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News by Bernard Goldberg Regnery, 150 pp., $27.95 PETER JENNINGS, the…
SETH BENARDETE, 1930-2001 by Harvey Mansfield Seth Benardete was a scholar, a philosopher, and a most extraordinary man. His post in life was to be a classics professor at New York University, but he was not an especially prominent professor. Nor was he much known in the world of public…
DID SADDAM HUSSEIN offer asylum to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar? The answer, at least according to a report last week in Ummat, an Urdu-language newspaper in Karachi, Pakistan, is yes. The paper claims that a senior Iraqi diplomat, Taha Husseyn, met in Kandahar with the Taliban's…