Roundup: Media's Take

Anthony Seldon: Iraq Is Britain's Watergate

[Anthony Seldon wrote Blair, the biography and is Master of Wellington College.] Today is the most important day in Tony Blair’s life since he left No 10 — hence his intense preparation, so desperate is he to clear his name of the accusations against him, and to show that his decision-making over Iraq was flawless in conception and execution. We will know by 5 o’clock today whether he has chosen to conduct himself as his own defence lawyer or as a statesman worthy of the high office

Henry A. Giroux: Howard Zinn: A Public Intellectual Who Mattered

[Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. He has taught at Boston University, Miami University of Ohio, and Penn State University. His most recent books include: The University in Chains: Confronting the military-Industrial-Academic Complex (Paradigm, 2007); Against the Terror of Neoliberalism (Paradigm, 2008); Youth in a Suspect Society (Palgrave 2009).] In 1977 I took my first

Robert Kaplan: Don't Panic About China

[Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, in Washington, D.C.] China is unnerving a lot of people. Its hackers have been launching cyber-attacks on companies, institutions, and web sites. It is refusing to be a responsible stakeholder in the international political system, cultivating, as it has been, good relations with some of the world’s most odious regimes. And, as I have been reporting for seve

Tony Mauro: Obama's Unprecedented Criticism of the Supreme Court

Tony Mauro is Supreme Court correspondent for National Law Journal, Incisive Media, and law.com. He has covered the Supreme Court since 1979, first for Gannett News Service and USA TODAY and then, since January 2000, for Legal Times, which merged with its sibling publication the National Law Journal in 2009. Mauro is also a legal correspondent for the First Amendment Center.President Barack Obama's pointed criticism of the Supreme Court in tonight's State of the Union address, which we reported on here and here was beyond unusual; it was almost unprecedented. The third branch rarely even merits a mention in the State of the Union speeches, according to a search we've made going back to Woodrow Wilson's speech in 1913 in this University of California Santa Barbara database. (Thanks to editor David Brown for the research.)Presidents have mentioned the Supreme Court by name only nine times since that Wilson speech nearly a century ago, according to the search, and it would be hard to categorize many of those nine as criticisms. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a lot of grievances with the Court, never mentioned it in any of his State of the Union messages. And Richard Nixon, who campaigned against the Warren Court, mentioned the Supreme Court in a State of the Union talk only once, in 1972, in a bland, welcoming way.

Anand Gopal: Obama’s Secret Prisons

[Anand Gopal has reported in Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. His dispatches can be read at anandgopal.com. He is currently working on a book about the Afghan war. This piece appears in print in the latest issue of the Nation magazine. To catch him in an audio interview with TomDispatch’s Timothy MacBain discussing how he got this story, click here.]

Michael Barone: Democrats fall as fast as Nixon Republicans in 1974

[Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.] Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts' special Senate election was for Democratic leaders a moment that can be described in two words, of which I will only print the first here, which is "oh."

Aaron Zelinsky: Obama's State of the Union Inspiration: Ronald Reagan

[Aaron Zelinsky is the Articles Editor at the 'Yale Law Journal'] President Obama's first State of the Union differed markedly from his other major speeches. Obama eschewed the flashier rhetoric of his inaugural and congressional address and avoided the biblical and literary allusions he favored in South Bend and Cairo. However, in at least one respect, Obama remained true to form. In past speeches, Obama has sought to channel famous Americans ranging from Martin Luth

James W. Ceaser: The Roots of Obama Worship

[James W. Ceaser is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of politics at the University of Virginia.] ...When the history of this period is written, the 2008 campaign will almost certainly be seen as a watershed event in cultural history, above and beyond any connection it had to American politics, when a worldwide movement congealed to display its enthusiasm for Barack Obama. This perspective will also require a reassessment of the place of Obama. To be sure, th

Andrew G. Bostom: The Pentagon's Willful Blindness

[Andrew Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad and associate professor of medicine at Brown University Medical School.] ...The contemporary willful ignorance -- and subversion -- of our DOD contrasts starkly with the studious and intellectually honest approach to jihad taken by C. Snouck Hurgronje. A professor and Dutch colonial official, Snouck Hurgronje was also a pioneering and prolific Western scholar of Islam. He visited Arabia (1884-85), including a stop at Mecca, whil

William Galston: What Would Reagan Do?

[A former policy advisor to President Clinton and presidential candidates, Bill Galston is an expert on domestic policy, political campaigns, and elections. His current research focuses on designing a new social contract and the implications of political polarization.] “The problems we inherited were far worse than most inside and out of government had expected; the recession was deeper that most inside and out of government had predicted. Curing these problems has taken more time a

Daniel Franklin: Get Rid of the U.S. Senate: A Dangerous (and Undemocratic) Institution

[Daniel Franklin is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his BA in political science from UCLA and his MA and PhD from the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. He has taught American politics and American foreign policy at Colgate University, The Colorado College, El Colegio de Mexico (Mexico City) and the University of Texas, Austin. He served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fe

Andrew Kohut, Jodie T. Allen, and Richard Auxier: It's All About Jobs, Except When It's Not

As the Obama administration redoubles its effort to communicate its concerns about unemployment in the face of sagging approval ratings, a look at the connection between the rise and fall of joblessness and the political fortunes of past presidents in the modern era is instructive. Recent history shows that the public response to all presidents has been shaped to some degree by rising or falling unemployment. However, only Ronald Reagan's ratings in his first term have borne as close a connectio

Amy Wilentz: The Haiti Haters

[Amy Wilentz is a Nation contributing editor and the author of the award-winning The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier (Simon & Schuster, 1989). She teaches journalism at the University of California, Irvine. ] The Haitian tragedy has opened up a whole new industry for what I call the genteel racist point of view... There are many problems in Haiti, but most of the negative pronouncements that have been circulating do not touch on them. The commentary has been psychopolitical r

James A. Morone: On Healthcare, Democrats Should Channel Harry Truman

[James A. Morone is chair of political science at Brown University and the author, with David Blumenthal, of "The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office."] What do the Democrats do now? After chasing healthcare reform since 1935, they finally had it in their grasp until Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown to fill Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat. Jittery Democrats promptly ran for cover; gleeful Republicans saw a shot at getting their congressional ma

Robert Kagan: How Obama Can Reverse Iran's Dangerous Course

President Obama has a once-in-a-generation opportunity over the next few months to help make the world a dramatically safer place. It's not by negotiating an arms deal with Russia, or strengthening the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or by making that elusive climate-change deal with the Chinese, worthy though those initiatives may be. It is by helping the Iranian people achieve a new form of government. Given the role that the Islamic theocracy in Tehran has played in leading and sponsoring a

Rich Lowry: 1994 Nightmare ... Dems Look Out of Touch

[Rich Lowry is a syndicated columnist and a commentator for the Fox News Channel.] For Democrats willing to see what's before their eyes, the nightmare came into sharper focus over the last week. Another 1994 might be in the offing. Back then, the beginning of the end came on a procedural vote. A Democratic majority that had held the House for four decades lost a routine party-line vote on a "rule," a basic measure allowing it to control the House floor.

Jonah Goldberg: Recognizing Terrorism

[Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.] It is always dangerous to mistake your ideological preferences for shrewd political strategy, but that is precisely what President Obama and his advisors have done with the War on Terror. On the right, the prevailing critique of the president’s approach to the War on Terror is that it is both

Mark E. Halperin: What Obama Can Learn from Reagan

[Mark E. Halperin is an American political analyst for Time magazine.] Back in January 2008, while meeting with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal right before the Democratic Nevada caucuses, Barack Obama offered some approving commentary on the legacy and influence of the 40th President. Ronald Reagan, he said, "changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not." Not surprisingly, Obama's r

Patrick Hennessey: Good news from Afghanistan ... democracy is taking root

[Patrick Hennessey is a former captain in the Grenadier Guards.] We’re in the village of Baluchan, about 570 miles from Kabul at a shurah in the heart of an area until recently under Taleban control. Over the past 48 hours British and Afghan troops have been engaged in firefights with the Taleban to clear the surrounding countryside. Hajibullah, the charismatic district governor, has just made his way up from Nad-e Ali in a nervous but cheerful convoy of well-protected vehicles. but

William F. Shughart II: Earthquakes and Economic Development

[William F. Shughart II is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Frederick A. P. Barnard Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi, and editor of the Independent Institute book, Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination.] Every natural disaster, like the proverbial dark cloud, supposedly has a silver lining. Images of the devastation visited on Haiti by the major earthquake that struck the island recently have pro