The Report They Forgot
In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement…
Target Employers
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? Would there be fewer job opportunities for those who should not be here and, consequently,…
Learning From History
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 illegal immigration, Congress struck a deal in which border control and employer responsibility were combined with…
The Last Thing She Wanted
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 cardiac event.” In his 1989 memoir, Harp, he reports that he also drafted a…
From Immigrant To Citizen
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 hand-wringing that today’s immigrants are not learning English or becoming “like us” as they used…
Be Our Guest?
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 the nation’s southern border, hundreds of thousands of immigrants — more than half of them undocumented…
Immigration Demystified
“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 members of Congress are now confronted with the demand to…
Red Parallels
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, displaced resentment, or opportunism — magnify and exploit the menace in ugly ways. Pandering to an angry,…
How They Did It
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 moderate course in office. Some thought he would do so because they’d been duped by…
Democratic Storytelling
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 republic for the common people. Adopting the great American taste for moral melodrama, they cast Thomas…
The New Nativism
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 American soil.” They celebrated their most recent success: a “border watch” in Arizona by fewer…
The Yes-Man
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 after serving seven years as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. With his…
Both Sides, Now
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 audience at the Washington screening put on by the nonprofit women’s group The…
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.
With God On His Side
From the archives: Before he was John McCain’s spiritual adviser, Rod Parsley rose to power via his controversial “Word of Faith” doctrine and his support for Ohio’s gay marriage ban.
Beware of Watchdog
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, “‘irresolute,’ ‘chicken,’ ‘weak-willed,’ ‘timid,’ ‘lily-livered’ — I like that one –…
A New New Low
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 measure would do that. He’s given the bill a genial moniker — the Streamlined Procedures Act — and…
A Covenant With America
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 congressional Dems were then. Here’s a 10-point manifesto that, if followed, may both win Congress back for…
Dossier: An Ounce Of Detention
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 … In a May 13, 2004, story, The New York Times reported that the whereabouts of…
Setting the Squawkers Straight
“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 Johnson. In 1968, LBJ enacted a one-year, 10-percent income-tax surcharge to help pay for…
Slouching Toward Disaster
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 case as it did after August 2001, when the president was…
Gates Of Privilege
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 book called The Rise of the Meritocracy, coining the now-commonplace term. A mock sociology doctoral dissertation…
