The American Prospect articles from September 2005

The American Prospect archives from September 2005

Letting go of Iraq.(PROSPECTS)
September 1, 2005... THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PRO-IRANIAN, ISLAMIC government in Iraq was not exactly what the Bush administration told us to expect from the war. But it may well be the result, and I am beginning to think that there is nothing that the United States...

Karl's bad.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... JOE CONASON'S "ROVE ON the Ropes" [August 2005] simply reinforces my concerns about the direction this nation is being taken by the current administration. If America truly is in its decline, it is due to the acts and actions of people such as...

As Orwell said.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... ROBERT KUTTNER'S "EXIT With Honor" [August] makes many good points, but that the United States can leave Iraq with honor is not one of them. This is like saying a bank robber whose heist went awry was able to negotiate with the police so that...

Point, Jacoby.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... THE ARTICLES "WITH GOD on Our Side?" [August] by Jim Wallis ["Time to Take Our Faith Back"] and Susan Jacoby ["Reason Before Religion"] are thoroughly good reading on the role of religion in public life. Though both authors suggest that a...

Sasha v. Sasha.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... SASHA ABRAMSKY IS RIGHT that South Africa has a serious crime problem. However, his article "One Nation, Under Siege" [April] is excessively alarmist. Having visited the country nearly every year for the last 15, I can say that Abramsky's...

Correction.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2005... Correction: Christopher Dreher's "Vast Write-Wing Conspiracy" [August] mis-identified Gary Aldrich as a former Secret Service agent. Aldrich was an FBI special agent.

They want your TV.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2005... AS CURRENT LAW HAS it, the residents of the 16 million American households that still rely on over-the-air broadcasts as their only source of television will awaken on January 1, 2007, to nothing but a snowy screen, as the channels they've...

Our federalists.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2005... WITH THE FEDERALIST Society, the right's networking organization for law students and lawyers, back in the news due to the John Roberts membership kerfuffle, many liberals are wondering, Why don't we have one of those? Well, we do. ...

Iraq, quantified.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2005... IF YOU'RE A JOURNALIST OR scholar writing about Iraq, chances are good you've come across the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, a collection of statistics on the country's reconstruction (www.brookings.edu/iraqindex). The data are compiled by...

Dossier: back to school.
September 1, 2005... The percentage of schools that during the 2002-03 school year flunked the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act were 5 percent in Alabama, 14 percent in Wyoming, 40 percent in Illinois, and 76 percent in...

Metro food fight.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2005... SINCE LATE JUNE, WASHINGTON's Metro buses and trains have been inundated by the "Got Lactose Intolerance" ad from MilkMakesMeSick.org. The advertisement features four individuals seemingly caught in the throes of severe gastrointestinal...

From the August 3 broadcast of the Focus on the Family radio show James Dobson.(TRANSCRIPT)(Brief Article)(Transcript)
September 1, 2005... From the August 3 broadcast of the Focus on the Family radio show James Dobson:... [P]eople talk about the potential for good that can come from destroying these little embryos and how we might be able to solve the problem of juvenile...

Nasty weather.(COIN-OP COLLECTIVE)(Poem)
September 1, 2005... Nasty Weather Don't know why Gavels pound up in the sky. Nasty weather... This storm may thunder on forever. Now Sandra Day's said goodbye. Don't know who Can determine Roberts' view. Foggy weather...

Chronic pain and opioids.
September 1, 2005... Debunking the Myths: Part 1 What is chronic pain? Chronic pain is a progressive disease of the nervous system, caused by failure of the body's internal pain control systems. The disease is accompanied by changes in the chemical and...

Voice-over America: you've read about what Kenneth Tomlinson is doing to public TV. What he's already done to the Voice of America is his other scandal.(Dispatches)
September 1, 2005... THE STORY OF KENNETH TOMLINson's efforts to impose his right-tilting version of "balance" on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has incited national controversy. But while that tale is well-known, Tomlinson's malign influence on...

First do some harm: physicians and psychologists are now taking part in interrogations. But are they following their professions' rules, or the military's?(DISPATCHES)
September 1, 2005... MOHAMMED, A 36-YEAR-OLD graduate of Baghdad University's College of Art, says he was examined by an American physician in a detention facility near Baghdad International Airport shortly after being arrested in late 2003. "The doctor said,...

The good fight: the new Partnership for a Secure America represents the good kind of bipartisanship. But is bipartisanship enough to dislodge the neocons?(DISPATCHES)
September 1, 2005... OUTSIDE THE NATIONAL PRESS Club on the morning of August 3, the Washington summer was as hot and oppressive as ever. But inside, Warren Rudman and Lee Hamilton, two grizzled veterans of the national-security world, called for cool at the launch...

Pop-aganda: a question for Karen Hughes: why is the administration peddling the kind of schlock to the Arab world that it's always denouncing at home?(DISPATCHES)
September 1, 2005... IN EARLY MARCH, GEORGE W. BUSH named his longtime adviser Karen Hughes the administration's undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Apparently, it's a woman's job: She was the third to be named to that post since...

How times have changed.(THE TAXONOMIST)
September 1, 2005... BACK IN THE LATE 1970s, WHEN GASOLINE PRICES zoomed and oil companies were making money hand over fist, our government enacted a windfall profit tax to return some of those unjustified gains to the public that was paying for them. Today, as...

Their war, too: are mere pundits responsible when an administration's policy goes wrong? When their sophistic arguments helped sell and sustain it, very.(Cover Story)
September 1, 2005... IN THE INFORMATION AGE, WARS ARE NOT MADE BY governments alone. This is especially true of wars of choice. When America has been attacked--at Pearl Harbor, or as on September 11--the government needed merely to tell the people that it was our...

Reforming juvenile justice: a century ago, reformers proved that prisons don't help wayward children. Now America is learning that lesson all over again.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... IN 1899, ILLINOIS AND COLORADO established a new "Children's Court." The idea was to substitute treatment and care for punishment of delinquent youths. These changes were promoted by child advocates such as the famous social activist Jane...

Adolescents, maturity, and the law: why science and development matter in juvenile justice.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... ANTHONY LASTER WAS A 15-YEAR-old eighth-grader with an IQ of 58 who was described by relatives as having the mind of a 5-year-old. One day in 1998, shortly after his mother died, Anthony was hungry, so he reached into the pocket of another...

Communities helping kids: why diversion, outreach, and counseling programs serve troubled children--and society--better than prisons.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... WITH THE TEMPERATURE CREEPING ABOVE 97 degrees in Austin, Texas, Melissa Barlow hurtles along Interstate 35 in a Toyota Corolla, the air conditioner blasting. It s a Thursday in June, and she has a tight schedule. Barlow supervises caseworkers...

A culture of caring with an inspired leader at the helm, Missouri shows the rest of the nation an effective--and cost-effective--reform model for young offenders.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... LIKE A BORN POLITICIAN, MARK STEWARD, DIRECtor of Missouri's Division of Youth Services, seldom forgets a name. Ambling through the gleaming halls of the Hogan Street Regional Youth Center in St. Louis on a recent summer afternoon, Steward...

Bayou betterment: in Louisiana, a new juvenile justice system is emerging, with the governor's strong support. If reform can happen here, it can succeed anywhere.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... THE FORMER CORRECTIONAL OFFICER MOPS sweat off his brow as he plays two-on-one basketball against kids he would have once called offenders. Michael Gaines gestures toward the man who s trying to block a layup by one of the kids. In the old...

Race and redemption: reform is coming to juvenile justice. But except in pioneering communities, it still comes too slowly for black and Latino youths.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... AS AN ATTORNEY FOR THE YOUTH Law Center, litigating largely over conditions of confinement, James Bell spent some 20 years in courtrooms across America. The scene was always much the same: Even in communities that were overwhelmingly white,...

Detention redemption: in one California county, progressive leaders and law-enforcement officials are transforming a troubled juvenile-justice system.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... SANTA CRUZ COUNTY'S JUVENILE hall sits on a pine- and oak-studded hillside across from a state park. It is a low-slung building made of concrete block with doors painted a bilious shade of green. From outside, it hardly looks like a...

Cruel convergence: the era of get-tough juvenile justice is also the era of managed care, and children with mental-health needs are caught in the crossfire.(SPECIAL REPORT: JUVENILE JUSTICE)
September 1, 2005... FOR THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN with debilitating mental illnesses, the get-tough juvenile-justice culture of the 1990s could not have come at a worse time. The new punitive policies emerged in tandem with the slow breakdown of the public...

Wrong, wrong, and ... wrong!
September 1, 2005... WRONG, WRONG, AND... WRONG! On Iraq and al-Qaeda On WMD William Kristol "I do believe Saddam "I think we'll be vindi- Hussein, at the end of cated when we discover ...

Student body right: at evangelical colleges like Pat Robertson's Regent, what they're taught and what they learn are two very different things.
September 1, 2005... IT WAS OVER CANTALOUPE AND COTTAGE CHEESE THAT the Lord told Pat Robertson to build a university. The year was 1975, and the minister, then 45, was running so late for a meeting that he decided to head to a nearby coffee shop, get his famous...

Inferior design: in late September, a contemporary Scopes trial gets under way in Pennsylvania. For the right, it's been 39 years in the making.
September 1, 2005... ON SEPTEMBER 26, AN EVENT THAT THE NATIONAL media will surely depict as a new Scopes trial is scheduled to begin. Hearings will commence in a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Dover, Pennsylvania,...

Who gives a flying flag? The smearing of Joe Wilson, the excuses for Karl Rove: for the pundits of the right, national security is just a bumper sticker.(MEDIA)
September 1, 2005... LOOKING AT THE REACTIONS OF THE right-wingers to l'affaire Novak-Rove-Wilson-Plame, you'd have to conclude that, for them, national security is a sometime thing--a talking point or a symbolic flourish, but not a real-world imperative involving...

The collapse.(Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... NIGHT DRAWS NEAR: IRAQ'S PEOPLE IN THE SHADOW OF AMERICA'S WAR BY ANTHONY SHADID Henry Holt & Co., 448 pages, $26.00 THE RELENTLESS CARNAGE AND rising illiberalism of Iraq are inducing shellshock in the advocates of the war. Among...

Always political.(Advice and Consent: the Politics of Judicial Appointments)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... ADVICE AND CONSENT: THE POLITICS OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS BY LEE EPSTEIN AND JEFFREY A. SEGAL Oxford University Press, 192 pages, $23.00 WHEN JOHN ROBERTS TESTIFIED before the Senate in 2003 on his nomination to a federal appellate court,...

The conservative as liberal.(Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... BECOMING JUSTICE BLACKMUN: HARRY BLACKMUN'S SUPREME COURT JOURNEY BY LINDA GREENHOUSE Times Books, 258 pages, $25.00 THE DAY THAT FORMER PRESIDENT Lyndon Johnson died, January 22, 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun announced the Supreme Court's...

Day 1,461 and counting.(THE LAST WORD)
September 1, 2005... THIS SEPTEMBER 11 WILL MARK THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY of the terrorist attacks on the United States. The media will focus on the ceremonies at the former World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, and other cities and towns around the country that...