The American Prospect articles from July 2006

The American Prospect archives from July 2006

What's the matter with class?
July 1, 2006... ON JUNE 6, CALIFORNIA VOTERS DECISIVELY REJECTED a ballot initiative to provide tax-supported public pre-kindergarten. A special surtax would have touched only residents making at least $400,000 or $800,000 for a couple. It's hard to think of a...

Prove me wrong.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... RARELY HAVE I FELT MORE conflicted about an essay than I did about Michael Tomasky's "Party in Search of a Notion" [June 2006]. On the one hand, I could only applaud his location, in civic republicanism, of a credo for the Democratic Party. As...

The dems left me.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... I'M 48, AND A LONG TIME ago I used to be in the middle of the Democratic Party. These days, I'm so far to the left--though my politics have barely changed--that the Democrats are something I can barely see on the horizon. Which is why I...

Here's your theme.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... SO, THE DEMOCRATS WANT a theme. Here it is: A SECURE AMERICA. On the domestic front: an America where Social Security guarantees the quality of life for older Americans; where a rational system of health care assures security in times of...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
July 1, 2006... In the June issue, Jeanne Lenzer's article, "Blood Not-So-Simple," incorrectly stated that Durham County, North Carolina, has 8 million residents. It has just over 1 million. Robert B. Reich's article, "Truly Locked in the Cabinet,"...

Under the rug.(Up Front)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... THE U.S. MILITARY SAYS IT'S CONDUCTING A THOROUGH investigation of the alleged November 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha. Skepticism may be in order. It's not that such investigators don't expend effort trying to get...

Stupidity08.com.(Unity08.com, website set up by political consultants)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Every few years, Americans' yearning for a third option besides the two major parties bubbles up in some misguided scheme to transcend the logic of the winner-take-all presidential election system. This year's hot new iteration, Unity08.com--a...

Perverse incentives.(Nancy Pelosi)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Long-standing rumors about various Democratic factions' frustrations with Nancy Pelosi's leadership of the House caucus took a turn for the ridiculous in their most recent incarnation. As Bob Novak wrote in June, "Talk is increasing among House...

Wacky in, wacky out.(Up Front)(Claude Allen replaced by Karl Zinsmeister as chief domestic policy adviser to the president for defrauding)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Chief domestic policy adviser to the President has become the go-to position for eccentric petty miscreants. The former occupant of the post, Claude Allen, had to step down after getting caught defrauding Washington, D.C.-area Hecht's and...

Time and again and again.(Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Shortly after news broke of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, National Review Online Editor Katherine Jean Lopez passed along NR Senior Editor David Pryce-Jones's take to readers: "He calls al-Zarqawi's demise both a 'colossal morale boost'...

Lost in the "flood".(Republican candidates )(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The conservative Washington Times reported in May that--contrary to rumors and in spite of President Bush's Nixonian political unpopularity--"Republican candidates are still flooding the White House Office of Political Affairs with phone calls...

Last man standing.(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Speaking of Weldon, while he may be keeping the Prez at arm's length like other wary Republican incumbents, he certainly deserves credit for manfully upholding 2003-vintage Iraq War claims that even the White House itself has long since...

Out of Africa.(corruption in Nigeria)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... It's perhaps a troubling sign of the times that the "culture of corruption" in Washington may end up having its biggest electoral impact in Nigeria. FBI investigators working the case of (alleged!) uber-corrupt Democratic Congressman William...

The question: Tom Delay has resigned his house seat! Any new career advice?(Up Front)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... "He should write his memoirs, but as fiction, a la James Frey. A nonfiction book by him couldn't pass the 'Oprah test.'" --Chris Bell, former congressman, Texas gubernatorial candidate "If he's not making license plates, he should...

Parody.(Up Front)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute recently aired TV ads on global warming. The spot extols the virtues of carbon dioxide. "We breathe it out," coos a soothing narrator. "Plants breathe it in." The tone then turns ominous:...

It takes a movement.(THE OUT YEARS)(Rosa Parks to be played by Montana governor Brian Schweitzer)
July 1, 2006... IF THE CURRENT REVIVAL OF PROGRESSIVE POLITICS were the civil-rights movement, the role of Rosa Parks would be played by Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. Every child in America learns each February the story of how Parks one day decided that...

Fairy-tale failure.(AIDS prevention, George W. Bush's abstinence policy)
July 1, 2006... EVEN IN AN ADMINISTRATION FAMOUS FOR ITS contempt for science, the President's tortured case for abstinence stands out. He committed $1 billion to abstinence-only programs abroad without a shred of scientific evidence that they prevent disease....

They've got a secret: a scholar learns that even 40-year-old papers are suddenly off limits.(Larry Berman writing about Lyndon B. Johnson )
July 1, 2006... LARRY BERMAN DIDN'T REALLY believe that a journal article he was writing in 2004 would break much new ground in telling the story of Lyndon B. Johnson and his conduct of the Vietnam War. Berman, a political science professor at the University...

Solidarity man: can Tom Vilsack really get new democrats to back organized labor?(POLITICS)
July 1, 2006... ON APRIL 3, AT AN UNPUBLICIZED strategy meeting, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack assembled AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, AFSCME president Gerry McEntee, and several other senior labor leaders with officials of the Democratic Leadership Council...

Cash-and-parry: Bolton pushes toward a shutdown, but developing nations push back.(THE UNITED NATIONS)(John Bolton)
July 1, 2006... WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE United Nations ran out of money? Will unpaid translators show up to work at the Security Council? Will Con Edison simply turn the lights off at First Avenue and 42nd Street? More importantly: Will peacekeeping troops...

Watching the detectives: other shoes begin to drop in the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal.(CAPITOL HILL)
July 1, 2006... WHEN NICK SCHWELLENBACH went down to the House of Representatives" legislative resource center in May to look into the widening Duke Cunningham corruption probe, he noticed a couple of other visitors at a neighboring table--a man and a woman,...

Body politics.(THE ABORTION WARS)
July 1, 2006... FOR YEARS, PRO-CHOICE ACTIVISTS HAVE feared The Moment when abortion rights disappear in America. But there is not going to be A Moment. There is a movement, and it is chipping away at choice in many small moments. Start with the Supreme...

$1.27 trillion: the price is wrong: depending on which administration official you, um, believed, the Iraq War was going to cost anywhere from $200 million to zero. But it's going to fly over $1 trillion. Awaiting the arrival of a sane administration, we offer a list of 11 ways not to waste money and lives, to improve America's moral standing in the world, and to make the country safer.(ARGUMENT)(Cover story)
July 1, 2006... ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, THE UNITED STATES was hit by devastating terrorist attacks perpetrated by a transnational terrorist network. Less than a year later, it was apparent that the Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq, allegedly as part of...

Is it good for the Jews? The recent controversy over the Israel lobby has focused on how it distorts U.S. foreign policy. Forgotten is whether it helps Israel (and the peace process).(American Israel Public Affairs Committee)(Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act)
July 1, 2006... ON MAY 23, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES passed Resolution 4681, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, by a vote of 361 to 37. Nothing remarkable about that. But the passage of H.R. 4681 had all the ingredients of the worrying way in which the...

Is the common good good? Five responses to "Party in Search of a Notion," Michael Tomasky's much-discussed essay on the future of the Democrats from our May issue.(EXCHANGE)
July 1, 2006... "Party in Search of a Notion," the essay by Prospect editor Michael Tomasky, provoked a tremendous response from readers, other writers, and political leaders. Press attention included a front-page article in The New York Times on May 9. ...

Hard labor: change to win leaders had big plans last year when they left the AFL-CIO to do more organizing. The resolve is there--but so are all the usual impediments.(American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations)
July 1, 2006... IT'S A COOL, SMOGLESS NOONTIME AT THE LOS ANGELES-LONG Beach harbor, and the guys who could be the future of American labor have lined up for lunch. Three weeks earlier, on May 1, the day that immigrants had stayed away from work, these truck...

Chicken wing: The West Wing will live on, and on, in syndication and on disc. But its real-time demise thankfully brings an end to a potent liberal allegory.
July 1, 2006... BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, THE West Wing will have ended weeks ago. Matt Santos will have picked out his Oval Office rug, and Josiah Bartlett will be boring building contractors with rapid-fire trivia as they haggle over the final details of...

Oversexed.(When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex since the Sixties)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... WHEN SEX GOES TO SCHOOL: WARRING VIEWS ON SEX SINCE THE SIXTIES BY KRISTIN LUKER Norton, 416 pages, $25.95 FROM A PARENT'S POINT OF VIEW, it's easy to see how sex education would be a disaster: How can a teacher standing in front of 30...

All the president's pets.(Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... LAPDOGS; HOW THE PRESS ROLLED OVER FOR BUSH BY ERIC BOEHLERT Free Press, 352 pages, $25.00 IT WILL COME AS NO SURPRISE TO readers of these pages that the galloping pack of Washington journalists has spent much of the last five and a half...

Why don't they like us?(America Against the World : How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked)(Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... AMERICA AGAINST THE WORLD: HOW WE ARE DIFFERENT AND WHY WE ARE DISLIKED BY ANDREW KOHUT AND BRUCE STOKES Times Books, 259 pages, $25.00 UBERPOWER: THE IMPERIAL TEMPTATION OF AMERICA BY JOSEF JOFFE Norton, 271 pages, $24.95 AFTER...

The Tchotchkes of war.(Iraq War)
July 1, 2006... TO SPEND CHRISTMAS IN BAGHDAD IS NOT A DREAM of many travelers, but it was what The New York Times assigned me to do in 1998. American bombs were raining down on the Iraqi capital that season, as they did periodically during the 1990s. Each...