The American Prospect articles from March 2007

The American Prospect archives from March 2007

Congressional battleground.(PROSPECTS)
March 1, 2007... Can the public make its will felt through Congress and start the difficult process of bringing closure to the Iraq War? Although the voters spoke last November, the administration has seen no need to listen. But the prospect of another defeat...

Vote for Klein.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... I found Ezra Klein's article ["Strategic Two-Fers," December 2006] to be an excellent, logical, and well-written article. However, under the paragraph heading "Voting Reform," one now proven reform was completely overlooked. I refer to the...

Wes hangs tough.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... I read with great interest and appreciation Matthew Yglesias' article, "Smears for Fears," [www. prospect.org/smears] because I am both a supporter of Wes Clark for president, and a Jew who, like Yglesias, does not want the United States to...

Anti-incrementalism.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... While "by the slice," [www.prospect.org/ slice] by Mathew Yglesias had many good points about how to compromise on national health care, his assumption is wrong. We do not need to compromise NOW. The time for compromise is a long way down the...

Correction.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Correction notice)
March 1, 2007... Correction: Harold Meyerson's "The Populist Persuasion" [December 2006] referred to a study by the Citizens Trade Watch. The study was conducted by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

From the executive editor.(CORRESPONDENCE)
March 1, 2007... We're missing a section in this issue, and it's by design. Our Dispatches section--the shorter news stories that preceded our feature stories for the better part of the past decade--is no more. More precisely, we're moving our more topical...

A candidate in every pot.(Up Front)(presidential campaign debates)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Let's see, now: on the democratic side, there's Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Loose-Lips Joe Biden, with Wesley Clark and just maybe Al Gore waiting in the wings. For...

Race-based GOP.(Up Front)(Tom Tancredo)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Reassuring news: Immigrant-bashing Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo isn't spending all his valuable time running for president. He's still concerned with the workings of Congress, and recently sent a note to the House Administration...

Shaky foundations.(Up Front)(discovery of Muslim cemetery in a museum construction site)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Who could object to a new Museum of Tolerance? In 2004, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center announced it would erect a version of its museum in the heart of Israeli West Jerusalem, designed by Frank Gehry himself. The digging...

Al-prospect.(Up Front)(Dinesh D'Souza's new book entitled 'The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11')(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Dinesh D'Souza, the Rishwain Research Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, has a new book out. It's called The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. (See our D'Souza-related quiz on the next page.) As...

Warmed over.(Up Front)(President George W. Bush's opinion on global warming)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... President Bush has always been concerned about global warming--you knew that, right? On February 7, following the release of a big new UN report on climate change, two White House flunkies, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John...

Baked cabernet.(Up Front)(global warming in Napa Valley, California)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Meanwhile, if even the president is now trying to rewrite his own history on global warming, we take it that America's elites have basically gotten the message on the issue. But just in case they haven't: The rising temperatures in California...

Any noticeable changes in hill life since the dems took over?(THE QUESTION)(United States Social Democrats)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... "After 12 long years of feeling like the Maytag repairman, I can finally legislate on behalf of working families throughout America." --Rep. Pete Stark, (D-CA) "Our nation's first female House Speaker, a Democratic majority, more...

Dinesh D'Souza--beyond parody?(PARODY)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Find out by taking our quiz! Below are seven real quotes from his new tome, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, along with three fake ones. Whoever can spot all three ringers gets a fellowship at the Hoover...

Six and two.(THE OUT YEARS)(effects of war on the United States of America)
March 1, 2007... WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE, DURING RONALD REAGAN'S "Morning in America," I had a classmate who is the person I always think of when I try to imagine the young George W. Bush. (Although the comparison is terribly unfair to this person, since unlike...

Settlement creep.(COMMENT)
March 1, 2007... AT FIRST GLANCE, IT SEEMED LIKE GOOD NEWS: In January, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz froze plans for a new settlement in the West Bank, partly in response to U.S. objections. Just a few weeks before, Peretz had given the go-ahead for the...

America's China fantasy: our political and business leaders insist that opening China to trade will eventually turn it into a democracy. But what if they're just making an authoritarian state much more powerful?
March 1, 2007... America has been operating with the wrong paradigm for China. Day after day, U.S. officials carry out policies based upon premises about China's future that are at best questionable and at worst downright false. The mistake lies in the...

Sight unseen: when curators began creating Vietnam's first international art show since 1962, they hoped their country's new openness to Western business would mean more cultural freedom. Were they ever wrong.(Saigon Open City )
March 1, 2007... THE ARTIST WAS SPREAD-EAGLED AGAINST THE wall. Dinh Q. Le had been putting up an enormous piece of artwork in the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum when he realized that he was missing his level, one of only two available for the installation...

Raising the bar: John Edwards is the most populist presidential candidate we've seen in many decades. But can this tribune for the poor champion the middle class as well?
March 1, 2007... IF THE SECRET TO SAMSON'S STRENGTH LAY IN HIS curly locks, the source of John Edwards' power is his voice. Speaking in a honeyed North Carolinian drawl peppered with "sirs" and "pleases," Edwards can talk of populism and class in terms that...

How congress got us out of Vietnam: once upon a time, Congress put an end to a bloody debacle. It can do it again.
March 1, 2007... SINCE JANUARY 10, WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH PROPOSED a "troop surge" in Iraq, the administration has responded to legislative critics by stating that Congress cannot handle the responsibility of conducting an effective war. "You cannot run a war by...

Dirty Harry goes P.C.: Clint Eastwood's empathy with doomed Japanese soldiers whitewashes their barbaric warmaking.(MEDIA)
March 1, 2007... AMONG FILM CRITICS, THERE seems to be a longing for a filmmaker who can assume the mantle of American master. And for many of them, Clint Eastwood is just the man. Choosing Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima as the best movie of 2006, The New...

Must trade kill equality?
March 1, 2007... AN ECONOMIC STRATEGY TO ADVANCE OPPORTUNITY, PROSPERITY, AND GROWTH BY ROBERTC. ALTMAN, JASON E. BORDOFF, PETER R. ORSZAG, AND ROBERT E. RUBIN The Hamilton Project, 28 pages, free at Hamiltonproject.org HOW WE COMPETE: WHAT COMPANIES AROUND...

How America does art.(Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture)(Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding)(Book review)
March 1, 2007... VISUAL SHOCK: A HISTORY OF CONTROVERSIES IN AMERICAN CULTURE BY MICHAEL KAMMEN Alfred A. Knopf, 450 pages, $35.00 GOOD AND PLENTY: THE CREATIVE SUCCESSES OF AMERICAN ARTS FUNDING BY TYLER COWEN Princeton University Press, 196 pages, $27.95...

Canoeing life's river.(OFF TOPIC)
March 1, 2007... I GREW UP IN AN URBAN WORLD OF CONCRETE AND asphalt. Nature was a few weeds sprouting up from sidewalk cracks in August. Summer camp was for rich kids. So I spent a lot of time dreaming of living in the wilderness, fueled by images from James...

Values begin at home, but who's home? In the struggle to balance work and family, work is winning.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... Family is the center of everyday American life. Our parents are our first protectors, first teachers, first role models, and first friends. Parents know that America's great reward is the quiet but incomparable satisfaction that comes from...

The architecture of work and family: to have a job and a life, we need to redesign the national household.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... WE HEAR A LOT OF TALK IN THE UNITED STATES today about "family values" and "personal responsibility." And yet being a good family member here can cost you your job or a career opportunity, or imperil your health and security. Conversely, being...

What do women and men want? Many of the same things--but our system contributes to gender conflicts over work, parenting, and marriage.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... YOUNG WORKERS TODAY GREW UP IN RAPIDLY changing times: They watched women march into the workplace and adults develop a wide range of alternatives to traditional marriage. Now making their own passage to adulthood, these "children of the gender...

The opt-out revolution revisited: women aren't foresaking careers for domestic life. The ground rules just make it impossible to have both.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... "I was tired of juggling. I was tired of feeling guilty. I was tired of holding the household reins in one hand. So I quit." On the cover of The New York Times Magazine for October 26, 2003, a classy looking white woman with long, straight...

Responsive workplaces: the business case for employment that values fairness and families.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... MORE AND MORE, WORKING PARENTS HAVE DUAL--and dueling--responsibilities on the job and at home. Yet today's workplace often seems stuck in a time warp, modeled for Ward and June Cleaver when the reality feels more like television's Survivor....

Setting a low bar.(WORK & FAMILY)(Working Mother magazine's awards)
March 1, 2007... Every year, Working Mother magazine announces its much-anticipated "100 Best Companies." Employers leap to publicize their inclusion on the list, and it's routinely a best-selling issue. But is the "100 Best"--and similar lists published by...

Atlantic passages: how Europe supports working parents and their children.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... MANY RICH COUNTRIES DO A far better job than the United States does of supporting workers who are balancing the competing demands of employment and parenthood. Several European countries, especially in northern and western Europe, provide...

What about fathers? Marriage, work, and family in men's lives.(WORK & FAMILY)
March 1, 2007... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND its allies like to tell us that Americans have forgotten about marriage, and that Americans have stopped caring about fathers. As good as it is to bring attention to the needs of fathers, on both points they are...

The mother of all issues: what it will take to put work and family on the national agenda.
March 1, 2007... GENERATION X HAS GROWN up. Its members and their personalities consumed our nation's attention in the 1980s, when it seemed this generation would go down in history as a group of spoiled slackers. Then in the late 1990s, the generation written...