The American Prospect articles from March 2006

The American Prospect archives from March 2006

Bush vs. Constitution.(PROSPECTS)(George W. Bush)
March 1, 2006... REPEATEDLY THROUGH OUR HISTORY, THE LIBERTIES guaranteed by the Constitution have been threatened in war by an overreacting government and then reaffirmed in peace by calmer leadership. The Mien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Lincoln's suspension...

The vision thing.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... MY THANKS TO GARANCE Franke-Ruta for the most thoughtful version I've yet seen of the argument for a "values" turn in the politics of the Democratic Party ("Remapping the Culture Debate," February 2006). While I was far more sympathetic to...

We're thinking ...(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... HERE AT GLOBAL TRADE Watch, we value The American Prospect as a forum for progressives to think beyond the conventional Beltway wisdom that has given us the flawed globalization and trade model represented by WTO, NAFTA, and CAFTA. go we were...

Yikes!(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2006... RECENTLY I WAS GIVEN a subscription to The American Prospect. Two days ago I was sent a mailing from the Democratic National Committee. Accident? I think not. There is simply no way that the PNC would have known to send me a mailing...

Correction.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2006... In the February issue, Kevin Mattson's article, "The Book of Liberal Virtues," said that Michel Foucault participated in the Paris student revolt in May 1968. The event at which Foucault was present actually took place on the campus of the...

Casey strikes out.(Up Front)(Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. for election)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... LIBERALS WEREN'T ENTHUSIASTIC WHEN THE POWERS that be in Pennsylvania Democratic circles began pushing heavily for Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. to be the party's nominee to run against Rick Santorum. That Casey is pro-life is one thing. More...

Problem; solution.(Up Front)(dealing with disloyal Republicans)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The White House is increasingly concerned about Republicans breaking ranks-Arlen Specter and John Sununu in the Senate, New Mexico's Heather Wilson in the House, and various bureaucrats. Karl Rove, naturally, is a bit miffed at these people....

Remember this.(Up Front)(presidential elections )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... It wasn't interesting that Virginia Senator George Allen won the 2008 presidential straw poll at the February Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) meeting with 22 percent of the vote. What was interesting was who came in second, and...

A man, a plan ...(Up Front)(Ron Wyden)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Oregon Senator Ron Wyden stopped by the office in February to tout his very sensible-seeming tax-reform plan, which would tax wealth at the same rate as wages. But he also told us the following interesting story. He watched the first debate...

The question: should Bush see Brokeback Mountain or Good Night, and Good Luck?(Up Front)
March 1, 2006... "Duh. Brokeback. It shows the reality of gay love. It may help him understand why his refusal to acknowledge even the existence of gays and lesbians in his public speeches is such an affront."--Andrew Sullivan, writer/blogger "Good Night,...

Red ink planet.(Up Front)(space spending, mission to Mars)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... What happened to Mars? Out rolled the question off one wit's tongue during the buildup to the 2006 State of the Union Address. Somewhat surprisingly, the mission to Mars, which was famously announced prior to the 2004 SOTU but omitted from the...

Lessons from abroad.(Up Front)(corruption issue)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Congressional Democrats hoping to use the corruption issue in 2006 took some heart from the Canadian Conservative Party's January victory over the long-time incumbent Liberals, a win driven largely by revelations of financial misdeeds by the...

Touchy, touchy.(Up Front)(Brian Baird)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Prospect readers might recall the fumingly irate letter to the editor that Congressman Brian Baird of Washington sent a few months back in response to Robert Kuttner and Asheesh Siddique's feature story on sell-out Democrats. That piece, Baird...

Progress.(Up Front)(Governor Bob Taft)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Good news for Ohio Republican Governor Bob Taft! A recent poll put his approval rating at 16 percent. That may sound low, but it's more than double the 6.5 percent he registered in a Toledo Blade survey last November, just a few months after he...

Harry and Howard.(Up Front)(Harry Reid and Howard Hughes' political activity)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... We had a breakfast discussion with Harry Reid not long ago. He made some news when he came out for "some type of public [campaign] financing," which is something he hadn't said before. But the discussion of his history with campaign finance...

The limits of limits.(THE OUT YEARS)(political reform)
March 1, 2006... OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN. There is now little doubt that the next three years will bring one revelation after another about the magnitude of congressional corruption. Democrats will relish this prospect, and "reform" will be...

Beyond repair.(COMMENT)(New Orleans, Louisiana)
March 1, 2006... I AM STRUGGLING WITH A MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL dilemma. I am a progressive, African American academic committed to battling racial inequality and I do not want my public voice deployed against struggling communities. So I have been reluctant to...

Meet the new boss: earmarks, schmearmarks: John Boehner begins an era of faux reform.(THE REPUBLICANS)
March 1, 2006... "WHAT, IS KATHERINE HARRIS counting the ballots in there?" Several journalists shot out the same joke after flak emerged from the closed-door House Republican conference meeting, which was held to announce that more ballots than actual voters...

Prescription for leadership: can the Democrats take advantage of a huge Republican failure?(MEDICARE)(prescription drug plan)
March 1, 2006... SEEMINGLY, DIVINE PROVIDENCE has delivered the Democrats the perfect issue for 2006--the epic Medicare prescription-drug screwup. Far from being an abstract (if grave) public issue like nuclear non-proliferation, this one hits up close and...

The Italian job: if anything, a visit to Rome only deepens the Niger forgeries mystery.(IRAQ)
March 1, 2006... ROME-- IN THIS ANCIENT CITY, JUST AS IN Washington, the origins of the infamous Niger yellowcake forgeries--the documents purporting to prove that Iraq was contracting to purchase vast quantities of uranium and cited by George W. Bush in...

Ashes of ACT: after defeat in 2004, progressive turnout groups mount the horse again.(CAMPAIGN '06)(America Coming Together)
March 1, 2006... IN THE SUMMER OF 2005, THE Director of the largest voter-mobilization organization that progressives have ever seen, sent e-mails out to most of its 30 staffers warning them that their paychecks would be cut off by the end of August. America...

Wage war: a red-state wedge issue, but for the progressive side: the minimum wage.(IN THE STATES)(Arizona)
March 1, 2006... BOB SCHWARTZ IS OUT TO RAISE Arizona's minimum wage. Or, more accurately, he's trying to create one, since the state has no minimum wage of its own and relies instead on the federal standard, which has been stuck at $5.15 since 1997. Last...

Persian cat-astrophe: the shocking looniness of the regime-change advocates of the right.(IRAN)(nuclear policy)
March 1, 2006... THE ATMOSPHERE ON THE MORNING of Monday, January 23, was more of a bad dream than a press conference. I was in a small room in the basement of the U.S. Capitol; sitting directly behind me amid the rows of cheap folding chairs was a young man...

If Washington blows up: think the unthinkable: it's 2009, and our government is decapitated in a terrorist attack. Who will become Speaker? Who'll sit on the Supreme Court? And as for the presidency ... Herewith, an immodest proposal to prepare for a day we hope will never come.(SCENARIO)
March 1, 2006... NOVEMBER 2009: AFTER A HARD-FOUGHT victory the year before, the new Democratic administration has come out of the starting gates in good shape. With the airwaves full of brave talk of new initiatives, there is real hope of a new beginning. Then...

With a little help from his friends: Rick Santorum, the Senate GOP's new point man on ethics, wrote "It Takes a Family" as counterpoint to It Takes a Village. But a review of his PAC expenditures--and a probe into his, ah, interesting mortgage--show that in his case, it takes a few hundred thousand dollars from lobbyists.(INVESTIGATION)(Cover Story)
March 1, 2006... THE ESTATES AT SHENSTONE FARM SPRAWL OVER 500 ACRES of steeply rolling, barren hillside, at the point where northern Virginia's traffic-clogged suburbs finally surrender to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On an unseasonably warm...

Welfare redux: back in 1996, we were pessimistic about reform. We were wrong. But new rules just pushed through may confirm our worst fears.(POLICY)
March 1, 2006... WHEN WELFARE REFORM PASSED IN 1996, critics (including all of us) feared a substantial increase in material hardship among single mothers and their children. We were wrong. Six years ago, after reviewing dozens of government surveys, two of us...

Marital blitz: this November, anti-gay-marriage bills will be back on ballots with a vengeance. But this time around, the gay and lesbian activist network is ready to play hardball.(REPORT)
March 1, 2006... DO YOU REMEMBER THE FALL 2004, GAY-BASHING festival? In 13 states, voters agreed to add to their constitutions a phrase like this one: "Marriage is between one man and one woman." The gay-bashing came afterward, when Democrats and liberal...

Dwight and left: the centenary of Dwight Macdonald's birth should inspire more Americans to read their most crotchety, snobby, and brilliant critic.(LETTERS)
March 1, 2006... IN 1958, WRITING IN THE JESUIT weekly America, the historian John Lukacs speculated whether Dwight Macdonald might become "The American Orwell." Noting that Macdonald's American "reputation is rising," Lukacs wrote that he was already known...

All power to the president.(The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11 )(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... THE POWERS OF WAR AND PEACE: THE CONSTITUTION AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS AFTER 9/11 BY JOHN YOO University of Chicago Press, 378 pages, $29.00 GEORGE W. BUSH WAS CAUGHT flat-footed on the morning of September 11, 2001. Intent on exercising...

The accused.(For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire)(One Woman's Army : The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story )(Book review)
March 1, 2006... FOR GOD AND COUNTRY: FAITH AND PATRIOTISM UNDER FIRE BY JAMES YEE (WITH AIMEE MOLLOY) Public Affairs, 240 pages, $24.00 ONE WOMAN'S ARMY: THE COMMANDING GENERAL OF ABU GHRAIB TELLS HER STORY BY JANIS KARPINSKI (WITH STEVEN STRASSER)...

White House strategy leak.(THE LAST WORD)(Discussion)
March 1, 2006... THE FOLLOWING IS THE TRANSCRIPT OF A RECENT White House meeting of Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. The Justice Department is probing...