Books in Review
First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life By Kenneth Starr. Warner Books, 320 pages, $26.95 Bill Clinton did not destroy his opponents; he drove them insane, and they destroyed themselves. Of all the careers Clinton ended in ignominy — Bob Dole, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich come to mind — one of the…
Books in Review
Can Gun Control Work? By James Jacobs. Oxford University Press, 287 pages, $27.50 The terror recently inflicted by the Washington-area sniper may have been frightening enough to rouse the public once again to demand measures that would reduce the carnage caused by gun violence in America. But is there anything that Congress can usefully do?…
Books in Review
Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy By Jean Bethke Elshtain. Basic Books, 336 pages, $20.00 The appellation “St. Jane” came early to Jane Addams. Florence Kelley, one of her closest comrades during the early years of settlement work at Hull House, once told Addams that if another woman called her a saint again,…
Where the Democrats Lost
Where did the Democrats lose in 2002? A lot rides on this question; wrong answers will produce poor targeting and ineffective politics, and the Democrats can afford precious little of either. But right answers can set the stage for future gains in the 2004 election and beyond. Base Mobilization Perhaps the most common answer –…
Reclaiming the Party
The Democratic party — like Enron, the FBI and the Catholic Church — is a dysfunctional institution that cannot reform itself from the inside. If the party were a well-run corporation whose products weren’t selling, its board of directors or its CEO would bring in outsiders to give an honest assessment of what was going…
King Coal
Since taking office, George W. Bush has aggressively rolled back environmental regulations and initiatives. What he hasn’t achieved by changing the rules he has done by reducing the staff devoted to enforcing them. According to a study by AIR Daily, the number of air-quality inspectors fell by 12 percent this year, and the number of…
Survival of the Slickest
It must take guts to be a “young-Earth” creationist. After all, imagine rejecting virtually all of modern science based on a literal interpretation of Genesis. Imagine opening yourself up to ridicule by insisting that Adam and Eve lived alongside the dinosaurs, Dinotopia-style, and that Noah crammed brontosauruses onto the Ark — necessary inferences if you…
Woman on Top
When it became clear that U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would be the next House Democratic leader, an unusual thing happened: Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle cheered. Democrats, who felt the party had never found its message in the 2002 campaign, were pleased to have a leader who takes strong positions regardless of…
Dems in the Dumps
We have been here before. In the wake of yet another of their periodic election debacles, the Democrats are deflated and dispirited, bothered and bewildered. Bewildered, I think, more than anything else. After all, this is not 1980, the year of the Reagan ascendancy. The American electorate is not clamoring for less government. Indeed, the…
The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA
Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department…
Rhyme and Reason
Part of the fun of 8 Mile is guessing at who’s in the lead role: Is it the real-life Marshall Mathers III, the sullen Eminem or the explosively perverse Slim Shady? Starring Mathers, aka Eminem, aka the most controversial white boy in music today, 8 Mile teases us with its billing as a semi-autobiographical account…
How to Undermine a Law
The events leading up to the high-profile resignations of Harvey Pitt and William Webster are symptomatic of a broad effort by President Bush, Republicans on Capitol Hill and the business community to undermine a six-month old law designed to prevent corporate fraud and accounting scandals like those that racked American business for the past year.…
Whose Tax Cuts?
I’m welcoming myself back to the Prospect by declaring a holiday on the payroll tax. Starting as soon as possible, you’ll be relieved of payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of your annual income. The tax holiday will last two years. Ballpark cost to the government: $700 billion. We’ll pay for it by repealing Bush’s…
Comment: The Unconvincing Case for War
Recently, the Prospect sponsored a debate on Iraq. Interestingly, both teams were ostensibly liberal Democrats. Arguing for a U.S. invasion were Jonathan Chait, a Prospect alumnus and author of a recent New Republic cover piece on the liberal case for war, and Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst, National Security Council staffer under Clinton and…
The Other War
President Bush and his administration, especially Secretary of State Colin Powell, deserve credit for skillfully and patiently involving the international community in the project to disarm Iraq. So, of course, do Bush’s critics, whose efforts compelled the United States to work through the United Nations’ inspection process rather than going it alone. The president has…
