The American Prospect articles from November 2005

The American Prospect archives from November 2005

Slouching toward disaster.(PROSPECTS)
November 1, 2005... MOST OF US DO NOT ORDINARILY CONSIDER OUR lives to be at stake in matters of public policy. The prospect of an avian flu pandemic, however, puts us all in jeopardy, and if the dilatory response of the Bush administration proves fatal in this...

People problem.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... I AM A GREAT ADMIRER OF The American Prospect (I believe I have read every issue since the first, cover to cover) but cannot understand why you would publish an article [Adam Werbach's "The End of the Population Movement," October 2005]...

Bonkers!(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... IT IS HARD TO KNOW WHERE to begin to respond to your recent article by Robert Kuttner and Asheesh Siddique, "The Defectors" [October]. It is fraught with error and epitomizes much of why the left loses elections and has stayed in the minority...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
November 1, 2005... Correction: Because of a production error, a version of Jo-Ann Mort's "State of the State" that omitted some fact-checking changes was printed in the October issue of the magazine. The piece noted that the wall being constructed between...

At least he's loyal.(Devil in the Details)(Joe Lieberman)
November 1, 2005... JOE LIEBERMAN MAY NOT have the voting record of a Republican, but he's often irked liberals with his unfortunate habit of playing one on TV. His reputation for disloyalty is unlikely to be undone by his decision to attend an October 8 party...

Ground-zero redux.(Devil in the Details)(New Orleans, sanitary conditions)
November 1, 2005... IN A WELCOME SIGN OF post-hurricane recovery, a pod of dolphins has been spotted frolicking in Lake Pontchartrain. For the terrestrial residents of the New Orleans area, however, coming home after Hurricane Katrina may be a considerably more...

The woes of white folk.(Devil in the Details)
November 1, 2005... AFRICAN AMERICANS HAVE the NAACP. Latinos have La Raza. But who speaks up for our poor, beleaguered white guys? William H. Regnery II, that's who. Regnery, a patriarch of the storied conservative publishing family, has founded a new think...

Dossier: an ounce of detention.(Devil in the Details)
November 1, 2005... The United States has detained approximately 70,000 people outside U.S. territory since late 2001... It's believed that more than 10,000 are still in U.S. custody in various camps and prisons in the United States, Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan...

Beat the devil.(Devil in the Details)(Mount Diablo, name change petition rejected)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... WE'VE BEEN MADE AWARE that there are cronies all over the Food and Drug Administration, that a crony may land on the Supreme Court, and that a horse-training crony ran the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But by gum, the U.S. Board on...

Transcript.(Today's Issues, American Family Radio, homosexuality)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... An exchange between Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association and host of American Family Radio's Today's Issues, and his guest, the Reverend Lou Sheldon: Wildmon: And let me just say one other thing, and we'll go on to our...

Banana Republicans.(MOLOTOV COMIX)(Cartoon)
November 1, 2005... STATE PROPAGANDA DEATH SQUADS "DISAPPEARANCES" GUERRILLA INSURGENCIES ASSASINATIONS CRONYISM STOLEN ELECTIONS COUPS DEBT RICH-POOR CHASM INABILITY TO MEET CITIZENS' BASIC NEEDS IN AN EMERGENCY ...

A new new low: they couldn't possibly believe that a wrongfully convicted capital defendant should be denied a federal-court review of evidence? Well ...(Dispatches)
November 1, 2005... IF REPUBLICANS ON THE SENATE JUDICIARY Committee get their way, the United States may soon have a law that could permit state-sanctioned murder. Sound improbable? Naturally the bill's chief sponsor, John Kyl of Arizona, doesn't say his...

All together now: challenging a record number of GOP incumbents? Coordinating their message this early? What a little blood in the water will do for a party.(DISPATCHES)
November 1, 2005... ON ELECTION NIGHT 2002, TV-watching Democrats across America let out a collective groan as then-Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe told CNN's Larry King, "I think it's going to be a very good night for the Democrats."...

Beware of watchdog: meet rabble-rouser Melanie Sloan. The Republicans don't like her. The Democrats are leery of her. She's exactly what this town needs.(DISPATCHES)
November 1, 2005... MELANIE SLOAN IS AT A LOSS. "I would never have thought that the Democrats would be so... I just need more words for 'spineless: I don't have enough," she says. "She turns around and grabs a thesaurus from her desk. "'Wimpy,'" she reads,...

Setting the squawkers straight.(THE TAXONOMIST)
November 1, 2005... "WE HERE AT SQUAWK BOX HAVE BEEN CAMPAIGNING for politicians to 'give back their pork' to help pay for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Our next guest offers up another possibility. He says we should consider following the path of President Lyndon...

The yes-man: President Bush sent Porter Goss to the CIA to keep the agency in line. What he's really doing is wrecking it.(Central Intelligence Agency)(Cover Story)
November 1, 2005... EXACTLY AS INTENDED, PORTER GOSS HAS HIT THE Central Intelligence Agency like a wrecking ball. The former Florida congressman, who had an undistinguished career as a CIA operations officer in the 1960s, came to the agency in September 2004...

With God on his side: meet Rod Parsley: rising star of the religious right, GOP ally--and subject of lawsuits over his church governance and secretive fund-raising practices.(nonpartisan Christocrat)
November 1, 2005... WHEN ZELL MILLER TOOK THE STAGE AT ONE of Ohio's largest "megachurches" last August, there was no talk of spitballs or duels, but there was plenty of rhetoric about soldiers and war. As the featured speaker at both a regular Sunday-evening...

The incompetence dodge: the liberal hawks now say the idea of the war wasn't bad, just its execution. This saves face--and serves a more dangerous function.
November 1, 2005... VICTORY, AS JOHN F. KENNEDY OBSERVED, HAS A thousand fathers, while defeat is an orphan. Abandoning the orphan that is the Iraq War has clearly been a protracted, painful process for the liberal hawks, those intellectuals and pundits so...

Both sides, now: TV in blue and red: Commander in Chief unfolds as a nonpartisan (yeah, right!) fantasy; Three Wishes is one big faith-based initiative.(television show 'Commander in Chief' portrays a woman as the President of United States)
November 1, 2005... IN HIS ADVANCE PUBLICITY WORK for Commander in Chief, series creator Rod Lurie told the press that the show--ABC's new drama about the first female president--was distinctly "anti-partisan." Oh please, Rod; it's a lefty wish come true. The...

Gates of privilege.(The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... THE CHOSEN: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF ADMISSION AND EXCLUSION AT HARVARD, YALE, AND PRINCETON BY JEROME KARABEL Houghton Mifflin, 684 pages, $28.00 IN 1958 A YOUNG BRITISH SOCIOLOGIST and Labour Party official named Michael Young published a...

The last thing she wanted.(The Year of Magical Thinking)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING BY JOAN DIDION Knopf, 227 pages, $23.95 "MILK IT, BUT NO EXCESSIVE melodramatics," John Gregory Dunne tells us he wrote to himself in 1987, shortly after his doctors declared him a candidate for a "catastrophic...

How they did it.(Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... OFF CENTER: THE REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION AND THE EROSION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY BY JACOB HACKER AND PAUL PIERSON Yale University Press, 272 pages, $25.00 MOST OBSERVERS EXPECTED AT the beginning of 2001 that George W. Bush would pursue a...

Democratic storytelling.(The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln )(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... THE RISE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN BY SEAN WILENTZ W.W. Norton & Company, 969 pages, $35.00 DURING THE EARLY 20TH CENtury, "Progressive historians" interpreted the American past as an epic struggle to perfect a democratic...

Red parallels.(The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... THE AGE OF ANXIETY: MCCARTHYISM TO TERRORISM BY HAYNES JOHNSON Harcourt, 624 pages, $26.00 A MAJOR THREAT TO THE UNITED States suddenly seizes national attention. Alongside some levelheaded responses, many public figures-motivated by fear,...

A covenant with America.(THE LAST WORD)
November 1, 2005... NEWT, YOUR 1994 "CONTRACT WITH AMERICA" helped win Congress for Republicans, but as subsequent history has shown, it did less than nothing for America. The nation is in deep trouble, and today's congressional Republicans are as unpopular as...

Immigration demystified: despite all the heat from the right, a consensus is developing, for workable solutions to the immigration mess. But we're not there yet.(planns to control illegal immigration)
November 1, 2005... "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." --F. Scott Fitzgerald PITY THE POOR LAWMAKER. REgardless of party or region, most...

Learning from history: as Congress seeks a comprehensive immigration fix, the lessons of 1986's historic reform must guide the way.
November 1, 2005... AS THE TEMPERATURE SURROUNDING immigration issues rises, let's remember that our political system walked this road 20 years ago during the debate that led to the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. In its attempt to tackle...

Target employers: for comprehensive immigration reform to work, employers need to feel the heat.
November 1, 2005... WHILE PEOPLE CHOOSE TO RISK LIFE AND limb to enter this country illegally for many reasons, the vast majority come to seek employment--and they find it. What would happen if employers were effectively penalized for hiring the undocumented?...

And the winner is ... guest workers live in fear of la migra, and Congress isn't helping them a bit.
November 1, 2005... HIDING FROM THE U.S. BORDER PATROL IN AN air-conditioning duct for nine and a half hours, Jorge Mendez couldn't even come down to urinate. As agents passed below, he had to keep from making the slightest noise. "I thought about my wife and...

The new nativism: the alarming overlap between white nationalists and mainstream anti-immigrant forces.(IMMIGRATION REFORM)
November 1, 2005... MORE THAN 400 ANTI-IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS gathered in Las Vegas over Memorial Day weekend to bemoan President Bush's failure to close the borders. One described the United States as a nation at war every time a Mexican flag is planted on...

Be our guest? Our economy benefits from immigrants. But if guest workers are treated as a caste without rights, native workers and immigrants will both suffer.(IMMIGRATION REFORM)
November 1, 2005... IMMIGRANTS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS. IN FACT, THE rapid clip of U.S. economic growth might not be possible without them. Even as academics debate whether immigrants take jobs away from domestic workers, and as homegrown militias organize to patrol...

From immigrant to citizen: most still want to become Americans. Unlike in past eras, though, our government is doing far too little to integrate them into U.S. society.(IMMIGRATION REFORM)
November 1, 2005... PERHAPS THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY THING ABOUT the integration of immigrants in this nation of immigrants is just how much it is being done by the immigrants themselves, with a minimum of effort by government or society at large. Despite widespread...