Stockade Justice
Even before the ink was dry on the antiterrorism bill, the Bush administration began relying less on powers granted it by a cowed Congress and more on assertions of inherent presidential authority. Several new actions–the establishment of military tribunals, the monitoring of lawyer-client conversations, the interrogation of several thousand Middle Eastern men, and the continued…
Commission Impossible
All successful commissions are the same; all unsuccessful commissions are unsuccessful in their own way. This is how the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security marked its singular sort of failure: A few days after being summoned to the White House for a chat with George W. Bush, co-chair Robert Parsons announced that the commission…
Holy War
When “Ibn Warraq,” the pseudonymous Muslim apostate, visited the United States after September 11, one of his first stops was the White House. There, he enjoyed an hour-and-a-half lunch with President Bush’s chief economic speechwriter, David Frum. Though Warraq confirms the meeting and has told supporters about it, Frum refuses to discuss it “in any…
“We”–Not “Me”
Distrust of government is down and the public is clearly looking for an expanded governmental role in a vast range of areas related to the September 11 attacks. How else can we explain the big debate on airline safety? The U.S. Senate wants to federalize security workers and the U.S. House wants to subject them…
Comment: Lose that Eyeshade
Senate Democratic leaders, stung by criticism that they have failed to challenge the Bush administration’s assault on civil liberties, are taking comfort from their goal-line stand against the latest round of proposed tax cuts. Yet as we approach the 2002 off-year elections, the Democrats could easily repeat the mistakes of the Clinton era by trying…
Smart Bomb?
Were it not for the butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County and the Democratic Party’s failure to insist on a statewide recount of the Florida vote, the crisis that has engulfed America since September 11 would be unfolding in a vastly different political landscape. Both houses of Congress would still be controlled by Republicans. Attorney…
Time’s Up
In the aftermath of September 11, a writer to TheNew York Times spoke for many New Yorkers when he wrote, “There is no more eloquent testimony to the mindlessness of term limits than the performance of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani during this time of crisis. We mistake change for improvement, and New York City will…
Inside Job
If you’ve caught much of the TV commentary about the “war against terrorism,” you’ve probably seen a lot of Richard Perle, the portly, Ronald Reagan-era assistant secretary of defense who kept the defense-hawk home fires burning throughout the Bill Clinton years from a perch at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. On such…
The Unending War
At the heart of President Bush’s war on terrorism lies a deepening contradiction that, unless resolved, will undermine the legitimacy of the entire war effort. The contradiction is embedded in the narrative of why we are at war and what it will take to win. On the one hand, the White House describes the war…
Airpower and Our Power
When the war began in early October, no one knew how long and difficult it would be, and many pointed to the Russians’ failed invasion of Afghanistan as a warning that the enterprise could prove to be a disaster. Two months later, as I write, the Taliban regime is in its final death throes in…
Feinstein’s Rule
Senator Dianne Feinstein has never been shy about grabbing hot-button law-and-order issues. So it was hardly surprising in the days after September 11 to see the California Democrat leading the charge for tougher visa restrictions and other controls on foreigners in the United States. As she pointed out, most of the plane hijackers who crashed…
Whose First Amendment?
With the rise of so-called reality television in recent years (proving that truth is tawdrier than fiction, too), it might well be asked what all of the TV writers are up to these days. Some, it would seem, have lent their fertile imaginations to a TV-industry lobbying and litigation campaign that, like the medium itself,…
An Imperial Presidency
Terrorism was expected to bring back big government, but lately it seems that federal power isn’t growing so much as it is coalescing in the White House. Some in Congress have reacted to recent power grabs by the Bush administration with appropriate outrage. But the tendency of Congress to guard its own power shouldn’t obscure…
Cultural Phenomena: Dumbledore’s Message
Back when the Harry Potter books first reached America, the righteous were ready: Conservative Christians called for a ban on the little wizard. Focus on the Family, a conservative religious group, cautioned that “witchcraft…is directly denounced in scripture.” Evangelical preachers pounded Harry Potter as “the work of the devil.” Harry flattened the preachers, of course–the…
Stimulus Wars;
Stimulus Wars When, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, conservatives pushed a $100-billion economic-stimulus package that favored their corporate allies over laid-off workers, a coalition of more than 60 groups, spearheaded by the Institute for America’s Future, built a nationwide campaign to expose the bill’s corporate profiteering and promote a counteragenda that actually…
The Relevance of Reverence
Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue By Paul Woodruff. Oxford University Press, 248 pages. $19.95 Something is missing from our modern lives, according toPaul Woodruff, and we know it–but we can’t identify exactly what it is. Woodruffhas a theory: What is missing is reverence. Reverence? American society prizes the irreverent. When film producerStanley Kramer asked a…
Seeing the Big Picture
Global Hollywood By Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell.Indiana University Press, 240 pages, $27.95 Those who contend that Hollywood and Washington are twobranches of the same cultural conglomerate will find ample evidence in GlobalHollywood. The relationship between these two company towns has been volatile at times, but the so-called Washwood alliance has…
Architecture: Boring Buildings
Now that the World Trade Center towers are gone, will Tony Soprano still glance at them in his side-view mirror as he drives home on the New Jersey Turnpike? Or will The Sopranos’ producers have him looking back at the now denuded skyline of Manhattan–at the squat residential towers of Battery Park City, all dressed…
Democracy’s Blueprints
Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do By Cass R. Sunstein. Oxford University Press. 304 pages $29.95 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, constitutionshave been a major American export. Like French lieutenants carrying a fieldmarshal’s baton in their rucksacks, many top-ten law professors have a draftdocument for Klopstockia or Zembla tucked away on their hard drives,…
Sex, Lies, Etc.
Set in a single, grim Michigan motel room, Richard Linklater’s latest film, Tape, has an air of let’s-put-on-a-movie spontaneity–and concentration–that’s often missing from contemporary American pictures. This refreshing charge derives in part from the film’s terse concept (a trio of high-school friends are reunited 10 years after graduation), but it also comes from the low-cost,…
