The American Prospect articles from February 2002

The American Prospect archives from February 2002

Fool me twice. (Comment).(evaluation of George W. Bush)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... "FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU," says a wise political maxim. "Fool me twice, shame on me." In his State of the Union address, President Bush will perpetrate a consumer fraud that makes his feint to the center in the 2000 campaign seem like...

Enron's enablers. (Comment).(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... OKAY, LET'S TAKE THE BUSH administration at its word, however mutable that word may be. Let's say only a handful of officials--the commerce and treasury secretaries, and (according to a subsequent clarification) several lesser officials at...

War and the constitution. (Correspondence).
February 11, 2002... UNDER EXISTING LAW, President George W. Bush has the legal authority to use military commissions to try certain suspected terrorists for violations of the law of war. In arguing otherwise, George P. Fletcher makes numerous blunders ["War and...

Correction.
February 11, 2002... Owing to an editorial error, part one of Amory B. and L. Hunter Lovins's article on energy in the January 28 issue was mistitled. The correct title is "Mobilizing Energy Solutions."

Everyone's a critic. (Devil In The Details).(billboard in Time Square)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... SINCE AS FAR BACK AS THE 1920s, Times Square has been home to a mind-numbing array of billboards and corporate logos, their neon vapidity lighting up the night. So it seemed altogether fitting and proper when Adbusters, a magazine that defines...

That's amore? (Devil In The Details).(Eugene Scalia denied appointment)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... CREDIT TOM DASCHLE WITH this much: After we reported last fall that Eugene Scalia--son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and heir to dad's uber-conservative bent--appeared to be a lock for Labor Department solicitor, the Senate majority...

Maker of presidents. (Devil In The Details).(International Monetary Fund)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... QUICK, NOW: WHAT ORGAN of the U.S. government has taken the guy who ran second in presidential balloting and transformed him into the president nonetheless? Yes, yes, the Supreme Court--but we have in mind an agency whose mischief is more...

The monthly million. (Devil In The Details).(Gray Davis)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... THE SWALLOWS FLUTTER back to Capistrano at the same time each year; the sun plops into the Pacific at the end of every day; but Californians now have a more rigorous measure for keeping track of time. The January campaign filings are in, and...

Get shorty! (Devil In The Details).(Robert Reich's candidacy for governor of Massachusetts)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... As you may have noticed, Robert Reich--U.S. labor secretary in the first term of the Clinton administration, architect of the minimum-wage hike of 1996, formulator of more good social policy than at least 49 (by actual count) state legislatures...

Bang for the buck, bust in the States. (Networks).(tax policy)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS another round of elite tax cuts masquerading as a $214-billion "stimulus" plan for the economy. Now, even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (www.cbo.gov) has issued a report that undermines the bulk of the plan....

Unlocking immigration. (Networks).(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... ANTI-IMMIGRATION CONSERVATIVES have used the post-September n climate to push their protectionist agenda. Nearly completed in the days before the attacks, a U.S.-Mexico deal that would have allowed millions of Mexicans to obtain temporary visas...

Daschle and Destiny: does the majority leader dare disturb the universe? (Below The Beltway).
February 11, 2002... IN LATE DECEMBER, AS REPUBLICANS and Democrats clashed by night over rival economic-stimulus plans, the nation's newspapers began to take note of a top-down GOP campaign to "demonize" Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. "Republicans leave...

Afghan assessment: what worked in Afghanistan and why it won't work in Iraq. (Gazette).
February 11, 2002... WHEN AMERICAN WAR-planes began bombing Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the Pentagon and the press cautioned that victory would not come quickly. The fabled Taliban warriors were battle-tested, schooled in guerrilla warfare, and uniquely...

The poll truth: what the media isn't telling you about Democratic strength. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... Over the last few months, the public's attention has shifted dramatically from a single-minded focus on combating terrorism to concerns about the ailing economy. That's a big and politically significant change: A bad economy almost always hurts...

A more civil society: NGOs at work for peace in Northern Ireland. (Gazette).
February 11, 2002... NEWS OF UNRELENTING VIOLENCE in the Mideast may suggest that it s utopian to expect peaceful resolution of abiding ethnic and religious hatreds, but some less visible efforts at cross-ethnic cooperation are getting results. Consider...

Bingaman with a plan: it's better than Bush's, but the Dems' energy bill falls short. (Gazette).(Jeff Bingaman)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... AFTER TWO DECADES OF drift and a year of crisis, the Democrats have finally proposed a serious, future-oriented energy policy. The Energy Policy Act of 2002 (Senate bill S1766), introduced by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman of...

Detective Andy Sipowicz, tax cheat. (The Taxonomist).(Abstract)
February 11, 2002... ANDY SIPOWICZ, NYPD BLUE'S CRUSTY CURMUDGEON WITH a heart of gold, has taken a second job, and I, for one, am pretty doggone disappointed with the circumstances. Since last September, there has been a welcome resurgence of popular support...

Bowling together: the United State of America.(Statistical Data Included)
February 11, 2002... THE CLOSING DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY found Americans growing ever less connected with one another and with collective life. We voted less, joined less, gave less, trusted less, invested less time in public affairs, and engaged less with...

Statehouse subversion: Massachusetts voters approved public financing for campaigns, but the legislature hasn't appropriated a nickel.
February 11, 2002... IN THE MID-1990S, A GROUP OF LIBERAL ACTIVISTS, with the support of a few wealthy donors, developed a new strategy to reduce the power of money in national politics. Let's not waste so much energy trying to get minor reforms through Congress,...

Return of the madhouse: supermax prisons are becoming the high-tech equivalent of the nineteenth-century snake pit.
February 11, 2002... LAST SUMMER, SOME 600 INMATES IN THE NOTORIOUS supermaximum-security unit at California's Pelican Bay State Prison stopped eating. They were protesting the conditions in which the state says it must hold its most difficult prisoners: locked up...

Energy forever: energy systems designed to be efficient, decentralized, and diversified are what national security demands, the public wants, and the market can supply.
February 11, 2002... THE WORLD IS DANGEROUS. AMERICA'S ENERGY policy makes it more so. In 1981 we wrote for the Pentagon what is still the definitive unclassified study of domestic energy vulnerability. We found, and government and industry experts later confirmed,...

Freedom's edge. (On The Contrary).(AIDS activists accused of stalking)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2002... IN SAN FRANCISCO, TWO MILITANT ADVOCATES FOR AIDS patients have been charged with stalking and threatening public-health officials, researchers, and reporters who have made or disseminated what they deem to be objectionable statements about...

Insufficient evidence. (Film).(In the Bedroom)
February 11, 2002... I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY EVERYBODY is making such a fuss over In the Bedroom, Todd Field's first feature-length movie. The film has a few surprisingly good moments, but these are vastly outweighed by its creakinesses, its unlikelihoods, and its...

Lonelier planet. (Travel).(East-West relations)
February 11, 2002... I WAS IN BOMBAY ON JANUARY 17, 1991, sitting in the Indian Airlines office in the financial district, when I heard the first rumors of bombs falling on Baghdad. My mission was to make last-minute ticket changes while my traveling companion, a...

Lame duck. (Comic Strips).(political comic strips)
February 11, 2002... BACK WHEN THE WORLD STILL cared about Gary Condit (which is to say, not too long ago), the politically conservative comic-strip duck Mallard Fillmore doled out some predictable partisan criticism: "Before the Chandra Levy story, ABC, NBC and...

Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. (Books in review: Posner proves his case).
February 11, 2002... Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline By Richard A. Posner. Harvard University Press, 408 pages, $29.95 RICHARD A. POSNER'S PUBLIC Intellectuals reminds me of my grandmother's attic: here an elephant table brought home from Africa;...

Theodore Rex. (Books in review: TR grit).
February 11, 2002... Theodore Rex By Edmund Morris. Random House, 864 pages, $35.00 OF ALL THE PRESIDENTIAL monuments in Washington, perhaps the most fitting is also one of the least known: the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, which hides amid the woods of an...

Theodore Roosevelt. (Books in review: TR grit).
February 11, 2002... Theodore Roosevelt By Louis Auchincloss. Henry Holt and Company, 155 pages, $20.00 OF ALL THE PRESIDENTIAL monuments in Washington, perhaps the most fitting is also one of the least known: the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, which hides amid...

The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF. (Books in review: trouble in the high command).
February 11, 2002... The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF By Paul Blustein. Public Affairs, 431 pages, $30.00 THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A nice vacation to take your mind off looming global financial meltdown....

The great recusal. (Editorial).(free enterprise)
February 25, 2002... THE ENRON SCANDAL SHOULD ring down the curtain on a whole philosophy of free-market capitalism and a whole style of government-corporate cronyism. It should launch a national movement to leash the corrupt power of money in politics so that...

Correspondence.
February 25, 2002... The following is part two of an exchange among professors Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe, and George P. Fletcher in response to Fletcher's article "War and the Constitution," [TAP, January 1-14, 2002]. Part one appeared in the February 11 issue...

Controlling Pakistan's nukes. (Correspondence).
February 25, 2002... IN HIS REFERENCE TO TWO articles in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn that announced our visit to Pakistan, Ramindar Singh concludes, or strongly suggests, from this evidence alone that these visits indicate that the United States "has taken...

Rush to judgment. (Devil In The Details).(campaign finance reform)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS picture? In Congress, Democrats rejoice that they have enough signatures to force a vote on the Shays-Meehan campaign-finance-reform bill, which is supposed to reduce the sway of big money over congressional elections....

Too cool to comprehend. (Devil In The Details).(Enron Corp.)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... THIS PAST DECEMBER, WE ran into a very successful investment banker and asked him about his firm's Enron exposure. "We haven't been in Enron for the past year," he replied. "We couldn't figure out what it was they were doing." Mind you, he...

Buy your lawmakers. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
February 25, 2002... It ain't just Enron, of course. As the following list of contributors to members of the House Financial Services Committee makes clear, the legislators who write the laws affecting a particular industry are particularly the recipients of big...

Hard road for soft money. (Networks).(campaign finance reform)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... WITH ENRON WIND AT their backs, advocates for a "soft money" ban are getting a lift, but perhaps a treacherous one. Americans for Reform (www.americans4reform.org), a coalition of more than 40 organizations that range from traditional...

Victory in Massachusetts? (Networks).(election funding law violated)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... MEANWHILE, THE BATTLE over the clean-elections law in Massachusetts gets curiouser and curiouser. Advocates of reform claimed a significant victory when the state's highest court ruled January 25 that the legislature was in violation of the...

Instant ideas. (Networks).(alternative voting system)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... ELECTORAL REFORM IN CONGRESS MAY have a positive impact for those pushing instant runoff voting (IRV). With nearly $3 billion likely to be flowing to the states to modernize voting equipment, IRV has become technically feasible. In an IRV...

Heavy lifting. (On The Contrary).(author Stephen Ambrose charged with plagiarism)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... PLAGIARISM CHARGES AGAINST POP HISTORIAN Stephen Ambrose are mounting; as I write this column, as many as six of his books have been found to include passages lifted from other writers without attribution. Scandals like this erupt periodically:...

Getting lay: will Enron's top brass go to jail? (Below The Beltway).
February 25, 2002... SOMETIME IN MID-JANUARY, THE worm turned for Enron executives. You could see it in the way George W. Bush raced to distance himself from his friend Kenneth L. Lay, like Prince Hal denouncing Falstaff: "I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy...

Where's Bill? Fiddling with his legacy--and his party. (Gazette).(Bill Clinton)
February 25, 2002... FORMER PRESIDENT BILL Clinton was enjoying a holiday break in Mexico with his wife and daughter when an SUV killed his chocolate lab, Buddy, near his home in Chappaqua, New York. If the dog had not died, few would have known that Clinton was on...

Toxic haste: New York's media rush to judgment on New York's air. (Gazette).
February 25, 2002... AFTER THE WORLD TRADE Center fell, many shaken New Yorkers took unexpected comfort in numbers. As the mayor's initial order for 10,000 body bags was gradually displaced by an increasingly verifiable estimated body count, the calamity began,...

Stop the press: why the media missed Latin America's collapse. (Gazette).
February 25, 2002... AS ARGENTINA SANK INTO its worst economic crisis ever, a January 9 Associated Press story blamed "the greed of international investors and bad timing by the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury." The New York Times was equally...

Bait and switch: how Alan Greenspan snookered the democrats. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... THERE IS A MOMENT IN EVERY successful con game when the victim thinks that he or she has gotten the better of the deal. Thus, going into the 2000 elections, Democrats congratulated themselves on having become the party of fiscal responsibility....

Why is the right so happy about Ted Kennedy? (The Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
February 25, 2002... ACCORDING TO PRESS REPORTS, REPUBLICAN INTEREST groups are "salivating" over a proposal by Senator Edward Kennedy to reduce the size of the Bush tax cuts. The Massachusetts Democrat wants to eliminate about $280 billion of the $1.35 trillion in...

A scandal for our time: Republicans ruled; ergo, Enron.
February 25, 2002... THE ENRON AFFAIR IS SHAPING UP AS QUITE POSsibly the largest political and financial scandal in American history. Untold billions of dollars have vanished down the drain in the biggest bankruptcy filing ever. Political connections ensnare every...

A parade to oblivion: that's where America's steel companies may end up if President Bush and the Congress don't heed the United Steelworkers and act fast.
February 25, 2002... WHEN EMPLOYEES AT THE STEEL MANUFACturer LTV cheered the resignation last November of the corporation's chief executive--he had been brought in only a year earlier to save the company--it was a telling sign. Steelworkers, who bristled at CEO...

Beyond Kyoto Lite: the Bush administration's absence from the global-warming talks could actually lead other nations to pursue a bolder approach.
February 25, 2002... AT THE END OF THE HOTTEST OCTOBER ON RECORD, delegates from 165 countries met in Marrakech last fall to finalize the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. At first glance, the Kyoto goals seem negligible: By 2012, greenhouse gases must be...

Raw loathing. (The Critics Film).(Critical Essay)
February 25, 2002... I SUSPECT FILMMAKER TODD Solondz of being the sort of man who has difficulties with public transport. I imagine him staggering gray-faced off the bus with his sense of self almost erased by the stink and proximity of his fellow man; or hanging...

The gospel according to Lewis. (Fantasia).(Christianity in C.S. Lewis' 'The Chronicles of Narnia')(Critical Essay)
February 25, 2002... LAST JUNE, BEFORE HOBBITS and Harry Potter began crowding out all other arts coverage, The New York Times ran a front-page story about The Chronicles of Narnia, the seven-volume series of children's fantasy books written by the English novelist...

The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House. (State of the debate: Clinton: the untold story).
February 25, 2002... The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House By Benjamin R. Barber. W.W. Norton and Company, 320 pages, $26.95 IN WASHINGTON, CONSERVATIVES still roam the Capitol trying to name airports, post offices, and federal...

The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years. (State of the debate: Clinton: the untold story).
February 25, 2002... The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years By Haynes Johnson. Harcourt, 610 pages, $27.00 IN WASHINGTON, CONSERVATIVES still roam the Capitol trying to name airports, post offices, and federal buildings for Ronald Reagan. But...

From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency. (State of the debate: Clinton: the untold story).
February 25, 2002... From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency By William C. Berman. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 141 pages, $16.95 IN WASHINGTON, CONSERVATIVES still roam the Capitol trying to name airports, post...

Political Fictions. (State of the debate: Clinton: the untold story).
February 25, 2002... Political Fictions By Joan Didion. Alfred A. Knopf, 338 pages, $25.00 IN WASHINGTON, CONSERVATIVES still roam the Capitol trying to name airports, post offices, and federal buildings for Ronald Reagan. But Democrats seem entirely unsure...

Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur. (Books in review: Tupac against the world).
February 25, 2002... Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur By Michael Eric Dyson. Basic Books, 292 pages, $24.00 I'LL NEVER FORGET THE ONE AND only time I saw Tupac Amaru Shakur, meandering down Michigan Avenue, Chicago's main strip, with two thug...