The American Prospect articles from May 2006

The American Prospect archives from May 2006

Next stop Iran?
May 1, 2006... DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR, WHILE RIGHT-wingers called for the rollback of Soviet communism, the strategists of containment argued that the United States ought to be patient, confident that internal forces would weaken communism from within and...

Uh, we did that?(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... THE DAY I RECEIVED THE American Prospect in the mail, I had already heard on radio and TV that Gore was saying he wasn't going to run for president in 2008. Apparently you showed him an advance copy of Ezra Klein's story ["The New New Gore,"...

More Gore.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... THANKS MUCH FOR THE Al Gore article in the last issue of The American Prospect. It is the first ray of hope I have felt about the Democrats winning the 2008 presidential election. Although I live in a "blue" state (Massachusetts) there is very...

Penta-gone.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... IN AN OTHERWISE USEFUL account, Harold Meyerson says in "Not Your Father's Detroit" [April] that, after World War II, "our technological innovation, often spurred by the investment of federal defense dollars, was second to none, and those...

Card shuffling.(Up Front)(Andy Card appointed at Office of Management)(Josh Bolten appointed at White House chief of staff)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... IT'S A SEASON OF "STAFF SHAKE-UPS" AND "NEW DIRECtions" at the beleaguered Bush White House. In late March, Bush announced the replacement of Andy Card with Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolten as White House chief of staff....

Dropped hammer.(Up Front)(Tom DeLay retires from public office)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Tom DeLay's announced retirement from public office couldn't have happened in a manner more perfectly reflective of the man. First came the amusing reports that part of the rationale for the announcement's timing was DeLay's ability to convert...

DeLay's good deeds.(Tom Delay)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Conservative encomiums for the fallen Hammer came soon after DeLay's announcement. Bob Novak kicked things off with a paean to the "shrewd congressional leader" who was felled by the perfidy of underlings. Michael Barone then weighed in with a...

Tale of two posts.(Up Front)
May 1, 2006... An April 9 Washington Post editorial on the revelation that "Scooter" Libby leaked portions of an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to Judith Miller referred to administration critics as using the news to launch "hyperbolic...

The question: it's May! If Dick Cheney were a flower, what flower would he be?.(Up Front)
May 1, 2006... "A prickly pear." --David, Flower Gallery, Washington, D.C. "It's tough; his character is so unlike a flower. I think of something bulky and ungraceful, like a protea." --Vladimir, Dupont Flowers, Washington, D.C. "A...

Who is, uh ...(Up Front)(Bill Frist passes the immigration reform bill)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... It's been a rough, rough month for Bill Frist. His efforts to steer an immigration reform bill through the Senate that could satisfy the two GOP factions on the issue--as well as the needs of his own hoped-for presidential campaign in...

Friends like these.(Jack Abramoff )(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Jack Abramoff might have been sentenced to six years in the stern, but prison walls likely won't contain new revelations of his past shady dealings. According to the Los Angeles Times, Abramoff invited the Ambassador of Sudan to a Washington...

What would Judas do?(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... In other Christianity- and PR-related news, according to a Gospel recently discovered in the Egyptian desert, Judas may not have been the cad he was cracked up to be. This Gospel, a Gnostic document from around the year 300, has Jesus assuring...

And finally.(Up Front)
May 1, 2006... If you want to be even more embarrassed by your president than you already are, go to your computer and Google around for an April 10 video clip of Dubya tackling a question from a young woman about the conduct of private contractors in Iraq....

Spot the fake 2006 right-wing book title.(QUIZ)
May 1, 2006... A. The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life B. Women Who Make the World Worse: And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports C. The...

The Labour soap opera.(Labour Party)
May 1, 2006... LONDON IS A PLACE WHERE THOMAS FRANK'S famous book bears the title What's the Matter with America?, thus extending the indictment to the whole nation, and where a small American child is required to affirm that she hates George W. Bush before...

We're working on them.(bloggers)
May 1, 2006... RIGHT-WING BLOGGERS LOVE AUTHORITY. THEY live to repeat slavishly the talking points of the Bush administration, bowing down like a pack of authoritarian cargo cultists before the words and images of the Jeep-in-Chief. Left-wing bloggers, on...

The new guy: Daniel Ortega plots a comeback--but an unlikely foe stands in his way.
May 1, 2006... MANAGUA, NICARAGUA-- WITHIN HOURS AFTER THE left-wing indigenous leader Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia last December, another outspoken critic of American power in the hemisphere, Daniel Ortega, sent him a message of...

Power outage: twenty years after People Power, things look like they did before it.(THE PHILIPPINES)
May 1, 2006... MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES-- FOR A MAN WHO MIGHT BE JAILED at any moment, Harry Roque Jr., appeared very relaxed when I met him in Manila in early March. Dressed in a white barong tagalog--the long, delicately embroidered shirt worn untucked...

Continental drift: demagogues and the dangerous tide of anti-immigrant populism.
May 1, 2006... SILVIO BERLUSCONI WAS TRAILING his center-left rival, Romano Prodi, in polls preceding Italy's general elections on April 9 and 10. So, less than two weeks before the vote, he did what most politicians in such situations do: He moved to shore...

Party in search of a notion: Democrats have matured into a disciplined opposition party, and they're increasingly confident of victory this fall. But the opportunity before them is far bigger than a few House and Senate seats if they can recognize--and seize--this unique historical moment.
May 1, 2006... THE DEMOCRATS ARE FEELING UPBEAT THESE DAYS, AND WHY NOT? The Republican president and vice president have lost the country's confidence. The Republican-controlled Congress is a sump of corruption, sycophancy, and broken principle. Races in the...

Vice squad: they terrorize other government officials, and they're so secretive that their names aren't even revealed to a harmless federal employee directory. And they've helped ruin the country. Meet Dick Cheney's staff.
May 1, 2006... BAD HEART, ERRANT SHOTGUN, AND Halliburton stock options in tow, Dick Cheney has ruled the White House roost for the past five years, amassing enough power to give rise to the joke that George W. Bush is "a heartbeat away from the presidency."...

First among thirds: since 1998, New York's Working Families Party has been that rare thing: a third party that doesn't run spoilers and has real-world impact. Now, the party is testing the waters beyond the Empire State.
May 1, 2006... ONE MORNING IN 1989, DAN CANTOR WAS HONEYMOONING in Scotland when his new wife, Laura Markham, looked up from a newspaper article about electoral returns in a European Parliament election. The virtues of European political systems isn't typical...

Life after wartime: the recent feuding between Japan and China underscores a little-noted historic dispute--Japan's miserly compensation of imperial victims.
May 1, 2006... IN ALL THE PUBLIC BICKERING RECENTLY between Japan and China, one fact has received remarkably little attention: Japan's continuing refusal to pay compensation to victims of its militarist-era brutality. Ever since Japan surrendered in...

Going postal.(elections by mail in Oregon)
May 1, 2006... THE FIRST TIME YOU HEAR ABOUT OREGON'S approach to voting, the idea sounds almost un-American. In 1998, the state that gave us assisted suicide decided to run all of its elections by mail: no voting booths, no frantic Election Day...

The Oregon voting revolution: how a vote-by-mail experiment transformed the democratic process.(VOTE BY MAIL)
May 1, 2006... OREGON'S VOTE-BY-MAIL SYSTEM CAME OF AGE on a cold, drizzly night in January 1996. It was the night of the special election to replace the disgraced Bob Packwood in the U.S. Senate with Gordon Smith, the charismatic Republican vegetable farmer...

On the Oregon trail: in a backlash against new electronic calamities, vote by mail spreads far beyond its roots, one county at a time.(VOTE BY MAIL)
May 1, 2006... OREGON'S STATEWIDE VOTE-BY-MAIL SYSTEM remains unique--for now. But with little fanfare, liberalized absentee balloting laws elsewhere have prompted a steady expansion of mail voting. In the process, popular support is growing, from the ground...

A technology too far.(INTERNET VOTING?)(direct recording electronic voting)
May 1, 2006... TOUCH-SCREEN, COMPUTERIZED BALLOTS--OFFICIALLY known as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems--are not a way station to a glorious, all-Internet future for American democracy. They're a technology cul-de-sac. An election system...

God, this guy's good: don't laugh--the reggae, rap, and devotion that infuse Matisyahu's third album place him in an elite tradition of lofty style blenders.(Matthew Miller)
May 1, 2006... THAT MUST BE A JOKE, I THOUGHT--along with a million or so others. Months ago, there began to appear, on newspapers and Web sites and storefronts, pictures of a tall young white man in a long beard, broad-brimmed hat and flowing coat: the...

Fight now, think later.(Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government-- and How We Take It Back)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... HOSTILE TAKEOVER: HOW BIG MONEY AND CORRUPTION CONQUERED OUR GOVERNMENT--AND HOW WE TAKE IT BACK BY DAVID SIROTA Crown, 384 pages, $24,00 DAVID SIROTA IS THE KIND OF pundit you'd like to have on your side in a knife fight and wouldn't want...

Don't get mad, get even.(Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do about It)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... GETTING EVEN: WHY WOMEN DON'T GET PAID LIKE MEN--AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT BY EVELYN MURPHY WITH E.J. GRAFF Touchstone, 352 pages, $24.95 JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE news couldn't get any worse, here comes a report from the trenches of the...

The curse on unions.(Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement)(Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... SOLIDARITY FOR SALE: HOW CORRUPTION DESTROYED THE LABOR MOVEMENT AND UNDERMINED AMERICA'S PROMISE BY ROBERT FITCH PublicAffairs, 560 pages, $28.50 MOBSTERS, UNIONS, AND FEDS: THE MAFIA AND THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT BY JAMES B. JACOBS New...

The soldier in me.
May 1, 2006... IT WAS JANUARY 1989, DURING MY SENIOR YEAR IN high school. My family was sitting at the dinner table when my mother turned to me: "I was talking to some mothers today, and their kids are all applying for colleges. When are you going to get to...