The American Prospect articles from February 2006

The American Prospect archives from February 2006

Is corruption enough?(PROSPECTS)
February 1, 2006... THE 2006 MID-TERM ELECTION WILL BE AMONG the most fateful in modern history. If the Democrats take back even one house, it will end the period of one-party rule and allow Congress to fully investigate the multiple embarrassments of the Bush...

For the record.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2006... I WAS SHOCKED BY THE gross inaccuracies in Sarah Posner's article ("Security for Sale," January 2006). Posner never contacted Alutiiq to verify the statements she published, and she did not accurately portray the important work Alutiiq performs...

Who loses?(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2006... THOUGH I BELIEVE THE current data in Linda Hirshman's article "Homeward Bound" (December 2005), I also fear that getting all women out of the home and into the boardroom may yield consequences just as disastrous as leaving them to rot with...

Season of the rat.(Up Front)
February 1, 2006... THE CODE OF OMERTA HAS BEEN SHATTERED. BIG JACK Abramoff has cracked; the feds will make him tell all. And up on Capitol Hill, on the Republican side of the aisle, it soon will be the season of the rat. The prosecutors will begin with the...

The anointed.(Up Front)
February 1, 2006... Three evangelical ministers applied holy oil to the seats and doors of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing room the week prior to Sam Alito's nomination hearings. Isn't it alarming how much of the news these days seems like fodder for an...

The season of giving.(Up Front)(Chris Redfern )(Brief Article)
February 1, 2006... Ohio House minority leader and Democrat Chris Redfern put aside past grievances this Christmas and helped out his Republican colleagues in a time of need. The Ohio House held its annual Christmas party at the Buckeye Hall of Fame Cafe, where...

They go Hugo.(Up Front)(Global Trade Watch)(Hugo Chavez)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... Here at the Prospect, we bow to no one in our long-standing admiration of Global Trade Watch, the offshoot of Public Citizen that, along with the AFL-CIO, has led the way both in opposing the corporate model of globalization and positing a more...

Touchy feely.(Up Front)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2006... New Mexico governor and likely presidential hopeful Bill Richardson is known as a glad-handing pol of the old school. But an alarming recent Albuquerque Journal report underscores the thin line between backslapping bonhomie and clinical mania....

Our nation's elite at work.(Up Front)(David Brooks)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... How many leading pundits and rising stars of intellectual journalism does it take to push an elevator button? At a recent lunch held at the Hoover Institution, an elevator ride saw David Brooks, his assistant, and The Atlantic Monthly's Ross...

Rubin-esque.(Up Front)(Michael Rubin)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Michael Rubin is best known to the world as an apologist for Ahmed Chalabi, and best known to denizens of 2000 L Street for his habit of smearing Prospect writers. But he also turns out to dabble...

Know thy constituents.(Up Front)(Marion Barry)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... D.C. Councilman and former D.C. mayor Marion Barry was mugged in his apartment in early January, and he assured the at-large assailants during a press conference that he wouldn't press charges. Barry then went above and beyond the ordinary call...

Speaking of his honor...(Up Front)(Lonnie Latham case)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... Barry, of course, is famous for the quote: "Bitch set me up." Well, Lonnie Latham, a Baptist pastor in Tulsa, member of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, and occasional inveigher against the evils of homosexuality, now...

Take my opinions ... please.(Up Front)(laughter in Supreme Court)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... In a recent study, Jay Wexler, a law professor at Boston University, tackled one of the more pressing matters facing the nation: Supreme Court laughter. Wexler's study, which was published in the law journal The Green Bag, found that Justice...

Armies of compassion.(Up Front)
February 1, 2006... George W. Bush's empathic relationship to our fighting men and women knows no bounds. There they are, over in Iraq, risking life and limb, stiffed on body armor. And here is Bush, living the comfortable and protected life a president leads. But...

The question: if you could secretly wiretap one person, whom would it be?(Up Front)
February 1, 2006... "Grover Norquist. I'd really like to know how that bizarre combination of ideological certitude and lack of ethics works. Is he cynical? Greedy? In denial? What a psychological study!" -- Molly Ivins, columnist "Myself, because I don't...

The progressive generation gap.(THE OUT YEARS)
February 1, 2006... NOT LONG AGO, I ATTENDED A MEETING OF 20 OR so progressive advocates and experts on a major policy issue. I looked around the room and realized that I was, I'm quite sure, the youngest person there. And that's happened before. But I'm 43 years...

Send up the clowns.(COMMENT)
February 1, 2006... "IT COULD PROBABLY BE SHOWN BY FACTS AND FIGURES that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain once observed. Computations remain to be performed; investigations have not been completed. But with GOP...

Another "drug baby" media scare?
February 1, 2006... Recently (July 27, 2005), Medical News Today (MNT) carried a story with the alarming title, "Single prenatal dose of meth causes birth defects." Join Together, a prominent website, published a summary of the story with a similar headline and...

"Duke" of deception: the overlooked security implications of the Cunningham scandal.(GOP SCANDALS)(Randy "Duke" Cunningham)
February 1, 2006... ON ITS FACE, THE CORRUPTION scandal involving California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former Vietnam War ace fighter pilot who pled guilty in November to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and others seeking...

Independence day: Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally, now pursues its own path. Guess why.(TURKEY)
February 1, 2006... ANKARA-- OVER THE PAST HALF-CENTURY, the United States has had few more faithful allies than Turkey. Beginning with the legendary bravery that Turkish soldiers showed while fighting alongside Americans during the Korean War, and extending...

The torture tutor: John Yoo didn't invent excuses for abuse of power. He learned them.(EXECUTIVE POWER)
February 1, 2006... AS THE AUTHOR OF OFFICIAL memoranda seeking to justify torture, warrant-flee wiretapping, detention without trial, and other expressions of lawless power, John Yoo appears to be enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy. Profiled in the mainstream...

Fear of flying: did Miami show that air-marshal training works? Quite the opposite.(HOMELAND SECURITY)(Miami International Airport)
February 1, 2006... ON DECEMBER 7, RIGOBERTO Alpizar, a 44-year-old man with a history of mental disorder, was killed, in a hail of bullets, by two air marshals at Miami International Airport. After the shooting, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said...

Talk to the enemy: a middle ground between victory and defeat: a negotiated settlement.(IRAQ)
February 1, 2006... THROUGHOUT DECEMBER, IN A political offensive designed to recapture the initiative over the failing war in Iraq, President Bush portrayed the battle there in stark terms. Iraq, he said, is the central front in a global struggle against...

Great expectations: people expect great things of Barack Obama. His first year in the Senate--in which he's shown a deliberative and sometimes surprising streak--has by design been a relatively quiet one. But it also suggests a man at the beginning of a long, ambitious, and intricate journey.(Biography)
February 1, 2006... BY 30 MINUTES AND SEVERAL DAYS, BARACK OBAMA is running late. He is supposed to be at his grandmother's in Hawaii--his wife and daughters already are there--but the Senate is still voting on some fairly significant legislation. So here he is,...

The book of liberal virtues: yes, they exist. And they're the best tools we have for countering the right's assertion that everything is political.
February 1, 2006... I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU: CONSERVATIVES ARE WINNING the culture wars. OK, that might not come as a shock, but here's the scary part: They have reason to be winning. The fight has done a superb job at exploiting certain weaknesses on the left;...

The next Wall Street scandal: it is incubating at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where Chris Cox, the new chairman, must first overcome his own history to be a tough regulator.(Biography)
February 1, 2006... IT WOULD BE HARD TO FIND A WORSE RESUME FOR chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission than that of Christopher Cox, who was confirmed in the job by the Senate last summer after hearings that The New York Times aptly described as a...

Remapping the culture debate: can the Democrats finally learn to talk culture? Fascinating new research challenges some cherished assumptions--and offers clues about the future.
February 1, 2006... TED NORDHAUS, A SELF-PROCLAIMED "RECOVERING pollster," and Michael Shellenberger, a former San Francisco public relations executive, began quietly sending out e-mails in the spring of 2005. Love your work, they'd write people they thought would...

Poverty is back! or at least it was supposed to be after Katrina, but five months on, even Democrats have dropped the subject. Here's how to revive it.(Hurricane Katrina)
February 1, 2006... IT WAS 1988, RONALD REAGAN'S FINAL STATE OF THE Union. The previous eight years had been good to the Gipper. The word "liberal" had been rendered radioactive, many items on the conservative wish list had been checked off, and Reagan himself had...

The new nuance: black and white are out, and shades of gray are in. And one new documentary, "Why We Fight", epitomizes the new trend powerfully.(FILM)(Syriana)(The Power of Nightmares)(Movie review)
February 1, 2006... DEVASTATING AS IT WAS, THE LAST presidential election did bestow one blessing on progressives--it cleaned out the art house. The post-election period has swept away much of what had become tiresome or belligerent in political films--the...

How the South rose again.(Book review)
February 1, 2006... WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE: AN UNTOLD HISTORY OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA BY IRA KATZNELSON W.W. Norton, 238 pages, $25.95 THE WHITE HOUSE LOOKS SOUTH BY WILLIAM E. LEUCHTENBURG Louisiana State University...

When the "flat world" shakes.(End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... END OF THE LINE: THE RISE AND COMING FALL OF THE GLOBAL CORPORATION BY BARRY C. LYNN Doubleday, 312 pages, $26.00 THE END OF THE LINE IS ABOUT the consequences of the "taking apart" of the modern corporation--the outsourcing of operations...

Among the bear-baiters.(OFF TOPIC)(pleasures of smoking)
February 1, 2006... I'M WRITING THIS WHILE ENJOYING ONE OF THE most satisfying moments of my day, one of the most satisfying moments known to humanity. It's morning. I prefer to take a sip, even two, from my favorite old oversized coffee cup, with a glazed...