Roundup: Media's Take

Pearl Duncan: Why Would Anyone Want to Rename Lower Manhattan's Park Row?

Pearl Duncan covered Newport-Bermuda Yacht Races, Miami-Montego Bay Yacht Races, Caribbean Ocean Racing Circuit (CORC) Races and others, for Sailing, Sail, and Yacht Racing/Cruising Magazines. Now she writes about historic New York and New Yorkers.A representative for the electronics store, J&R Music and Computer Stores, says he is seeking to boost retail sales by asking the Community Board to rename Park Row, J&R Row. Frankly, the activity that will boost sales for J&R and any other retailer in Lower Manhattan is to continue to develop the area in a style that reminds New Yorkers, visitors and tourists alike of how vital the Park Row site is today, and how essential it was in the life of the city. There were so many changes and so much gentrification, the historical importance of the area is sometimes lost to those who are not aware of the area’s history.  What is needed today as Lower Manhattan revitalizes itself is not a push to rename the streets and locales, but more effort to highlight the attractions, so often overlooked, including the history and attractions related to merchants.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: What Our Declaration Really Said

E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for the Washington Post.Our nation confronts a challenge this Fourth of July that we face but rarely: We are at odds over the meaning of our history and why, to quote our Declaration of Independence, “governments are instituted.”Only divisions this deep can explain why we are taking risks with our country’s future that we’re usually wise enough to avoid. Arguments over how much government should tax and spend are the very stuff of democracy’s give-and-take. Now, the debate is shadowed by worries that if a willful faction does not get what it wants, it might bring the nation to default.This is, well, crazy. It makes sense only if politicians believe — or have convinced themselves — that they are fighting over matters of principle so profound that any means to defeat their opponents is defensible.

Lobsang Sangay: What China Could Learn from the Dalai Lama

The writer, until recently a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, will assume the post of Kalon Tripa on Aug. 8.Wednesday, on his 76th birthday, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be honored at Verizon Center by 11,000 people, including Arun Gandhi and Martin Luther King III, the grandson and son of the two stalwarts of nonviolence.This spring, when people put their lives on the line for democracy during the Jasmine Revolution, with Col. Moammar Gaddafi still shedding blood to hold on to power in Libya, and despite impassioned appeals by Tibetans, the Dalai Lama devolved all his political power to democratically elected Tibetan leaders. That means that the Dalai Lama gave up his constitutional power to dismiss the Tibetan parliament, judiciary and executive; to sign or veto bills; to summon emergency meetings; and to appoint representatives and envoys abroad..

John McCormack: Lincoln Said It Best: The Founding Fathers Opposed Slavery

John McCormack is a staff writer for the Weekly Standard.One gets the sense that some in the media are doing their best to help Michele Bachmann win the Republican nomination by attacking her over ridiculous kerfuffles. The latest example involves her claim that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery. On Good Morning America, host George Stephanopoulos told Bachmann that her claim is "just not true"...The Founders put slavery on the path to ultimate extinction, Abraham Lincoln said. But the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 threatened to bring about slavery's resurgence by opening up new territories to slaveowning. In 1854, Lincoln made this argument in a series of speeches on behalf of candidates opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. "In these addresses Lincoln set forth the themes that he would carry into the presidency six years later," writes Princeton's James M. McPherson in the Battle Cry of Freedom....

Phil Angelides: The Real Causes of the Economic Crisis? They’re History

The writer served as chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which conducted the official inquiry into the nation’s financial and economic crisis.They say that winners get to write history. Three years after the meltdown of our financial markets, it’s clear who is winning and who is losing. Wall Street — arms outstretched in triumph — is racing toward the finish-line tape while millions of American families are struggling to stay on their feet. With victory seemingly in hand, the historical rewrite is in full swing....If  you are Rep. Paul Ryan, you ignore the fact that our federal budget deficit has ballooned more than $1 trillion annually since the financial collapse. You disregard the reality that two-thirds of the deficit increase is directly attributable to the economic downturn and bipartisan fiscal measures adopted to bolster the economy. Instead of focusing on the real cause of the deficit, you conflate today’s budgetary disaster with the long-term challenges of Medicare so you can shred the social safety net.

Alexander Golts: Forget Missile Defense, the Threat Is Afghanistan

Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal. The more I cover global affairs, the more it takes me back to the 1980s when I wrote for the main Soviet military newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda. For example, for the past decade Russia has claimed that the U.S. missile defense system is a threat to Russia's national security. In response, the Kremlin threatens a "symmetrical response," including a new arms race. I remember the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan were on the brink of signing a historic agreement to eliminate all ballistic missiles, but the talks broke down over three words — Strategic Defense Initiative —the U.S. missile defense system otherwise known as "Star Wars." And what a shame, because Star Wars was nothing more than a huge bluff. Nonetheless, Gorbachev, having scared himself into a frenzy over Star Wars, walked away from the bold U.S. disarmament proposal. Now U.S. President Barack Obama is announcing the start of his exit strategy from Afghanistan.

Max Fisher: The Country Where Slavery Is Still Normal

Max Fisher is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he edits and writes for the International channel.

Steven Plaut: Why Israel Needs to Get Serious about Treason

Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press. A collection of his commentaries on the current events in Israel can be found on his "blog" at www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.Israel recently passed a law that would strip Israelis of their citizenship if convicted of espionage or treason.  Condemned for this by countries all over the world, almost all of whom have far harsher anti-treason laws than Israel, the Israeli law has yet to be applied to anyone.  Sometimes called the “Azmi Bishara Law,” it was motivated by an Arab member of the Israeli parliament (or Knesset), Azmi Bishara, from one of the Arab fascist parties, who had openly engaged in espionage and treason, including passing on intelligence to the Hezb’Allah terrorist organization while it was firing rockets at Israeli civilians.  Bishara is now in hiding and has yet to be prosecuted.  The anti-Israel lobby has denounced this law as “racist,” just as it denounces everything Israel does as racist (including rescuing Haitian earthquake victims)....

Edward Wyckoff Williams: Marriage Equality: How Blacks Paved the Way

Edward Wyckoff Williams is an author, a columnist, a political and economic analyst for MSNBC and NBC Universal, and a former investment banker. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

Rich Lowry: The Last 20th-Century President?

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. Sometime between 2008 and today, Pres.

Richard Stengel: One Document, Under Siege

Richard Stengel is managing editor of Time Magazine.Here are a few things the framers did not know about: World War II. DNA. Sexting. Airplanes. The atom. Television. Medicare. Collateralized debt obligations. The germ theory of disease. Miniskirts. The internal combustion engine. Computers. Antibiotics. Lady Gaga.

John Kampfner: The Age of Western Intervention Is Over, Finally

John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship and author of Freedom For Sale and Blair's Wars.With a rhetorical flourish, President Obama last week drew to a close an era of war. The President's speech on Afghanistan attracted attention, but not as much as it should have done, given its historical moment.

Gideon Rose: What Would Nixon Do?

Gideon Rose is the editor of Foreign Affairs and author of “How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle.”What [Obama] needs is a strategy for getting out without turning a retreat into a rout — and he would be wise to borrow one from the last American administration to extricate itself from a thankless, seemingly endless counterinsurgency in a remote and strategically marginal region. Mr. Obama should ask himself, in short: What would Nixon do?

T.J. English: The Last Godfather

T.J. English is the author of five non-fiction books on the subjects of organized crime, criminal justice and the American underworld, including The Savage City, The Westies, and Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster. His journalism has appeared in Playboy, Esquire, New York, and other publications.When legendary mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, 81, was nabbed earlier this week after nearly 16 years on the lam, it appeared to some as though the door slammed shut on the longest running show in the American underworld.

Jeffrey Rosen: Legal Conservatism Goes to War With Itself

Jeffrey Rosen is the legal editor of The New Republic.

Mohammad Ali Atassi: My Syria, Awake Again After 40 Years

Mohammad Ali Atassi is a journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist.

Richard Cohen: President Obama’s Afghanistan Speech Confirms America’s Decline

Richard Cohen is a columnist for the WaPo.The American Century just ended. This was the phrase coined by Henry Luce, which so aptly described America as the modern-day colossus, more powerful than any nation had ever been. Wednesday night, President Obama said that power had reached its limit. He was bringing 10,000 troops home from Afghanistan. The war was not finished, but we are....

George Will: John McCain’s Never-ending War

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post.

David Rieff: Humanitarianism ... The New Imperialism

David Rieff is the author of eight books, including A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis (Simon & Schuster, 2003) and At the Point Of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention (Simon & Schuster, 2005). He is currently completing a book on the global food crisis.

Jeffrey Lord: Is Sarah Palin Bachmann's Goldwater?

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.Is Bachmannia replacing Obamamania?Has Sarah Palin elected Michele Bachmann?