Roundup

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• 
• SOURCE: Informed Comment
  7-23-17
  

  Top Five Rogues Pardoned by Presidents; will Trump try to be 6th?

  by Juan Cole

  And no the president can’t pardon himself or Nixon would have been first in line.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  7-22-17
  

  Donald Trump’s Plan to Save Western Civilization

  by Stephen Wertheim

  The president promised an “America First” foreign policy, but he’s taken on something far more ambitious.

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  7-23-17
  

  The new Detroit’s fatal flaw

  by Heather Ann Thompson

  Fifty years ago, Detroit burned. The new Detroit is making the same mistakes.

• 
• SOURCE: Corey Robin (Blog)
  7-24-17
  

  The Democrats: A party that wants to die but can’t pull the plug

  by Corey Robin

  Democrats and Republicans alike have fallen for the myth that job training programs work.  They never do.  And this is the Democrats' "new" proposal?

• 
• SOURCE: NY Daily News
  7-24-17
  

  Are school vouchers bad because early proponents had racist motivations?

  by Jonathan Zimmerman

  Call it the fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree fallacy: If something had evil roots, it remains evil.

• 
• SOURCE: Moyers & Company
  7-21-17
  

  How Did We Become A Billionaires’ Republic?

  by Jedediah Purdy

  A new book argues that the Constitution’s framers believed that vast concentrations of wealth were the enemy of democracy — so what happened?

• 
• SOURCE: LA Progressive
  7-21-17
  

  Revisiting H.L. Mencken in The Age of Trump

  by Frank Fear

  “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of this land will reach their heart’s content at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  7-21-17
  

  No matter what he does, history says Trump will never be popular

  by Michael Kazin

  Presidents who’ve lost the popular vote don’t win popular support.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  7-21-17
  

  Why Trump and Mueller aren't Clinton and Starr

  by Julian Zelizer

  This comparison misses something pretty fundamental. Starr was working under the independent counsel law that Congress passed in 1978. So Clinton couldn't fire him.

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  7-18-17
  

  Was the Founding Generation Right to Worry?

  by Sarah Swedberg

  Americans’ current level of concern about the mental health of the man serving in the White House goes beyond what many of us have seen in our lifetimes, but, like all concerns, this one, too has a history.

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  7-19-17
  

  Will Trump's Obsession With Loyalty Bring Him Down?

  by James David Robenalt

  Covering up for his favorite aides is what sank Richard Nixon. Is Trump making the same mistakes?

• 
• SOURCE: Moyers & Company
  7-14-17
  

  Summer of Love and Rage

  by Todd Gitlin

  If you were in the ghettoes of Newark, Detroit or scores of other cities that summer, you were not wearing flowers in your hair. Forget about utopia: You were staking out, in action, fury and bitterness.

• 
• 7-20-14
  

  Roundup Top 10!

  This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

• 
• SOURCE: The Times of London
  7-20-17
  

  The Dunkirk myth never told our real story

  by David Aaronovitch

  We British tell ourselves we’re at our best when standing alone but the long history of empire disproves that.

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  7-18-17
  

  Buying ‘friends in this Congress’: The smoking gun that triggered a political scandal

  by Robert Mitchell

  It was called the Credit Mobilier scandal and it involved a congressman who went on to be president:  James Garfield. 

• 
• SOURCE: Special to HNN
  7-18-17
  

  Veterans Call on U.S. to Sign Nuclear Ban Treaty

  by Brian Trautman, Gerry Condon and Samantha Ferguson

  The treaty marks a significant milestone to help free the world of nuclear weapons.

• 
• SOURCE: The Boston Globe
  7-17-17
  

  Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy are more similar than you think

  by Niall Ferguson

  Like Trump, JFK violated social conventions and claimed to defend western civilization while acting in contravention of its avowed principles.

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  7-12-17
  

  Partisanship is an American tradition — and good for democracy

  by Aaron Astor

  Bipartisanship is the exception, not the rule.

• 
• SOURCE: New Republic
  7-17-17
  

  Trump’s Austerity Politics

  by Kim Phillips-Fein

  How the president’s budget proposal grew out of New York’s financial crisis in the 1970s.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7-17-17
  

  Who Gets to Own Iraq’s Religious Heritage?

  by Sigal Samuel

  An archeologist on cultural preservation in the shadow of ISIS