Sophie Pollitt-Cohen writes:
Teddy Roosevelt stated the problem well when he said, “A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.” Obama got in trouble for saying that the Cambridge Police acted “stupidly” when they arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. You know what’s stupid? People thinking that Obama was [...]
Archive for the ‘U.S. Politics’ Category
Curses From an Old Manse
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged Abigail Adams, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Patrick Henry, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill on July 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
World’s leading black-studies scholar arrested
Posted in Personalities, U.S. Politics on July 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University Professor who specializes in African-American studies, has been arrested at his home on dubious charges of disorderly conduct. A statement by Gates and link to the police report are here. Some judicious comments are found in this thread on Crooked Timber (where I found out about it).
Affirmative Action, Buchanan-Style
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged affirmative action, Pat Buchanan, Sonia Sotomayor on July 17, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Pat Buchanan, among other conservatives, has been all arage over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court justice. Sotomayer, Buchanan argues, is an affirmative action hire, selected not because she’s the best qualified candidate but because she’s a Hispanic woman. (For an example of Buchanan in action see this debate he had with [...]
Hidden In Plain Sight
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged disguises, Obama on July 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Sophie Pollitt-Cohen writes:
Today, we know what important people look like.
In the Times the other day, there were two (2) articles about government people on the beach. In the first, “On Facebook, Future Spy Chief is Revealed (Pale Legs, Too),” Sarah Lyall wrote that Sir John Sawyers, who is about to be head of MI6 (where James [...]
McNamara and the Managerial Revolution
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged James Burnham, Managerial Revolution, Robert McNamara on July 6, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Robert McNamara died earlier today. In 2004, I used the movie The Fog of War to look at the larger meaning of McNamara’s life. Here’s my article:
McNamara as War Manager
Although he was only two years old at the time, Robert McNamara claims he can still remember the spontaneous celebrations that broke out in 1918 when [...]
Advanced In Another Direction
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged Sarah Palin, Harvey Kurtzman, Douglas MacArthur, Oliver Prince Smith on July 4, 2009 | 1 Comment »
In her remarkably incoherent speech announcing that she’s stepping down as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin misattributed a quote to Douglas MacArthur. As the New York Times reports:
But at another point she invoked a military quotation, misattributing it to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in what seemed to be an effort to wave aside any suggestion that [...]
The pause button
Posted in Foreign affairs, History, U.S. Politics, tagged city of walls, Iraq, prospects for peace, Sunni Awakening, surge on May 23, 2009 | 4 Comments »
As far as the bulk of the American — and for that matter, world — press is concerned, the Iraq War ended sometime in early 2008. Casualty rates suffered by American troops had dropped significantly, and this happy circumstance was generally credited to the “surge” of up to 40,000 additional troops deployed to Iraq starting [...]
The Case for Immigration Amnesty
Posted in Philosophy, U.S. Politics on May 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Joseph Carens is one of the world’s most interesting political theorists. I first became aware of him when I took a class in which we were assigned to read his famous essay , “Aliens and Citizens: The Case For Open Borders,” in which Carens makes the provocative argument that immigration controls should be abolished. Carens, [...]
Crime without punishment
Posted in Foreign affairs, History, U.S. Politics, tagged Fujimori, Obama, prosecutions, torture on April 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
A moment of great rejoicing for human rights activists and champions of the rule of law came at the beginning of this month as former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail for “crimes against humanity”, having authorized murders, kidnappings, and torture as part of a severe anti-terrorist campaign in the [...]
Great Moments in Nepotism
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged Elliot Abrams, Norman Podhoretz, Sam Munson on February 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
1) In an blog post about the young writer Sam Munson, the New Yorker Observer describes him thus “Mr. Munson, the online editor of neoconservative journal Commentary.” A sentence later we’re told, ” Mr. Munson—who is, incidentally, the grandson of former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz.”
2) In the pages pages of the Jerusalem Post, Ruth Blum Liebowitz (daughter of Norman [...]
