The American Prospect articles from April 2005

The American Prospect archives from April 2005

Their sun also rises.(Prospects)
April 1, 2005... FAMOUSLY, ON THE LAST DAY OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin pointed to an image of the sun painted on the back of George Washington's chair and said that he finally had "the happiness to know it is a rising and...

Pipe dreamers?(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... THE LIBERAL VIEWS AS expressed in "Liberal Uses of Power" [March 2005], if embodied in foreign policy, would place the United States at great risk and keep millions of people subjected to tyranny. Liberals don't get it, and, as offered by this...

Viva noam.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... I GOT THE MARCH PROSPECT and the cover showed Noam Chomsky. versus Dick Cheney. "Wow!" I said. "The Prospect scored a debate between one of America's great dissidents and the vice president." I searched and searched, but finally discovered it...

Bad habit.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... I FEAR THAT DEAN BAKER'S casual brush-off of Social Security's "accounting fiction" ["Bush's Numbers Racket," February]--that it will be paid for by general funds when the notes come due--is too optimistic. If we have an administration that...

Different danger.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... HEREWITH TWO COMMENTS on Graham Allison's characterization of nuclear terrorism as "The Gravest Danger" to Americans [March]. Of the lesser importance is that the risk of nuclear terrorism could be completely eliminated and there would...

The G-word.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... IN MICHAEL STEINBERGER'S article "Neo-Economics" [March], he states that "by its very nature, globalization tends to disperse power." Implicitly in the article, this is purported to describe an erosion of America's preeminence in international...

Moore, please.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... AFTER READING "IS Moore Less?" [February], I had to check the cover of the magazine: Was I reading the National Review? As a Democrat, I was enraged that not one newspaper, television station, or radio station opposed the Iraq War (and they...

Man of the people.(Devil in the Details)
April 1, 2005... READERS OF THE CONGRESSIONAL newspaper The Hill may have stumbled across a confusing headline on March 3: "Santorum shifts left for '06 run." Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum? He of the "man-on-dog" theory of marital law? The Senate's most...

The dunce circuit.(Devil in the Details)
April 1, 2005... WHAT WITH ALL THE administration's wailing about the threat of Democratic filibusters, you may have missed the details on whom, exactly; George W. Bush has nominated to serve on the federal bench. Consider these three lulus the Senate Judiciary...

A moveable myth.(Devil in the Details)(weapons of mass destruction in Syria)
April 1, 2005... SO HOW 'BOUT THOSE weapons of mass destruction in Syria? Speaking in front of an audience of veterans at Suncreek United Methodist Church in Allen, Texas, on February 19, Republican Congressman Sam Johnson let his listeners in on a...

Dossier: you pay, they play.(tax income statistics)
April 1, 2005... The top 1 percent of U.S. households received an average income-tax cut of approximately $40,990 in 2004, boosting their after-tax income by 5.3 percent... The middle 20 percent of households received an average tax cut of $980, boosting their...

Of little faith.(Devil in the Details)(Bush administration and religion)
April 1, 2005... IN EARLY MARCH, GEORGE W. Bush rallied his "armies of compassion" at the annual conference for leaders of faith-based organizations in Washington. "I am here to talk about my continued commitment to faith-based and community groups because I'm...

Transcript.(Devil in the Details)
April 1, 2005... From the March 3 edition of FOX News' Hannity & Colmes (Co-host) Alan Colmes: Look, is it OK? Do you have a First Amendment right not to stand up during the Pledge of Allegiance or "The Star-Spangled Banner"? (Nationally syndicated...

Thirty attorneys general speak out on pain management!(Advertisement)
April 1, 2005... To: The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) From: The National Association of Attorneys General January 19, 2005 We, the undersigned Attorneys General, write to express our concern about recent DEA actions with respect to...

Must Joe go? It may be a fool's errand to run a primary against an incumbent senator. But some Nutmeg Staters are in search of one brave fool.(Dispatches)
April 1, 2005... JOE LIEBERMAN HAS A SECRET: He's a pretty orthodox Democrat. In the spring of 2001, when 12 of the party's senators--almost one-quarter of the caucus--voted for the first round of Bush tax cuts, Lieberman voted against them. The liberal group...

College try: David Horowitz's "academic bill of rights" was considered too loopy in Georgia. But it's done damage--and is gaining steam--elsewhere.(Dispatches)
April 1, 2005... "PEOPLE DON'T BELIEVE ME," GROUSES David Horowitz, "but I actually have a great affection for the idea of the liberal university." His critics can be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Horowitz is at the high point of what has been a...

Labor intense: the frustration and rage that burst forth at the AFL-CIO's Las Vegas meeting portends a dramatic and possibly ugly summer showdown.(Dispatches)
April 1, 2005... LAS VEGAS -- "I THINK JOHN SWEENEY'S Administration is rhetorically prepared to embrace any and all proposals for change to stay in power," one of American labor's dissident leaders told me in January. "If John Sweeney is re-elected, he's...

They make it up. You decide.(The Taxonomist)
April 1, 2005... LAST FALL, AFTER MY GROUP PUT OUT A STUDY detailing widespread tax avoidance by America's largest and most profitable corporations, the right-wing Heritage Foundation published a screed attacking us. It was one blatant misstatement after...

The front: hard-liners want evidence that Iran is up to no good. And they're turning to strange sources to get it.
April 1, 2005... FOR IRANIANS IN EXILE--AND THE AMERICANS who become embroiled in their intrigues--Paris has long been the city of shadows. This is where the Ayatollah Khomenei awaited the ominous victory of his Islamic revolution; and where the deposed...

The women's view: the pro-choice movement has seen moral complexity as its enemy. But moral complexity is exactly why choice must be saved.(Cover Story)
April 1, 2005... KIMBERLY WAS AT HOME WITH HER TWO SLEEPING children when her estranged husband, high on methamphetamines and angry about their impending divorce, showed up at her door last "He came in and said he wanted to talk about child-support...

Zapatero steps up: legalized gay marriage--in Spain? That hardly begins to describe the new prime minister's dramatic first year in office.
April 1, 2005... "AIM WELL, MILICIANO FOR YOU DEFEND THE Republic." On a barren hill in Asturias, Spain, near the border with Leon, Jose Fernandez, a Loyalist soldier, etched this phrase into wet cement in September 1936, adding, "The Trench of Captain Lozano."...

Goodbye to all that: the first lesson for any opposition movement today is that the '60s were actually the decade of the right's triumph.
April 1, 2005... WITH CONSERVATISM DOMINANT IN EVERY branch of government, it is clear that liberals are an opposition party. We have to think, act, and strategize like an opposition party. That means figuring out ways to articulate what we stand for while not...

Blog rolled: that most bloggers are not journalists is a given. That some are trained partisan operatives out to take scalps is not.
April 1, 2005... DURING ONE ESPECIALLY HECTIC WEEK IN MID-FEBRUARY, The Internet took three scalps in what appeared to be unrelated events. Liberal bloggers forced Talon News White House correspondent James D. Guckert, aka "Jeff Gannon," to resign after it was...

Two if by sea: the port complex of Los Angeles is America's umbilical cord to world trade. And it's still an open bull's-eye.
April 1, 2005... LAST OCTOBER, OSAMA BIN LADEN RELEASED HIS first videotaped message in nearly three years. It was lengthier than anything he'd sent out for a while because he got wrapped up in business talk. "So we are continuing this policy in bleeding...

One nation, under siege: apartheid is becoming a distant memory in South Africa. But is a country this consumed by crime really free?
April 1, 2005... ELEVEN YEARS AGO, MY FIRST YEAR LIVING IN NEW York, I sat on the roof of International House on the edge of Harlem, with hundreds of other students, raucously celebrating as elections in South Africa, half a world away, finished off the...

Hello, henhouse? Fox calling: so conservatives say they want to work at mainstream newspapers. There's just one problem: That would mean doing actual reporting.(Media)
April 1, 2005... "SHOULD WE HAVE AFFIRMATIVE action for conservatives?" This question, arresting enough by itself, becomes all the more so when the "we" in that question is The New York Times. It cropped up during a January 17 meeting in a nicely paneled Times...

A different equality.(Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety)(The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream)(The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... PERFECT MADNESS: MOTHERHOOD IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY BY JUDITH WARNER Riverhead, 304 pages, $23.95 THE CAREER MYSTIQUE: CRACKS IN THE AMERICAN DREAM BY PHYLLIS MOEN AND PATRICIA ROEHLING Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 304 pages, $22.95 ...

Liberals, think big.(Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to do to Recover It)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... RETURN TO GREATNESS: HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SENSE OF PURPOSE AND WHAT IT NEEDS TO DO TO RECOVER IT BY ALAN WOLFE Princeton University Press, 224 pages, $22.95 IN RECENT YEARS, THE SOCIOLOGIST Alan Wolfe has emerged as one of America's most...

Freedom freely imagined.(Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... LIBERTY AND FREEDOM: A VISUAL HISTORY OF AMERICA'S FOUNDING IDEAS BY DAVID HACKETT FISCHER Oxford University Press, 851 pages, $50.00 GEORGE W. BUSH USED THE WORD "freedom" 24 times during his second inaugural address. After the...

Street fights.(Every Man a Spectator: A History of Wall Street in American Life)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... EVERY MAN A SPECULATOR: A HISTORY OF WALL STREET IN AMERICAN LIFE BY STEVEN FRASER HarperCollins, 752 pages, $29.95 CAN THE NEW DEAL BE REPEALED? Is America's welfare state, incomplete though it is, so out of sync with the nation's...

The Bolton fights (Plural).(The Last Word)
April 1, 2005... WITHIN MINUTES OF SECRETARY OF STATE Condoleezza Rice's March 7 announcement that John Bolton was the administration's pick as ambassador to the United Nations, liberal Washington sprang into action. Bolton, suddenly, was Topic A, even more so...