Victims Versus Suspects
In the 1960s, the Supreme Court recognized that people accused of crimes were imbued with constitutional rights, which the states were obliged to respect. In the course of a few years, the Warren Court applied the exclusionary rule to the states, prohibiting the introduction of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment; it fashioned…
How Did Feminism Get to Be
JM: Why do people keep making the mistake of thinking that feminism is white? African-American women have historically supported the movement in greater numbers than white women have. BS: Black feminism is very much alive among the activists I know. But its organizations are not visible in mainstream politics. It faces resistance in the African-American…
Bad Hair #2
This March, primary voters in Youngstown, Ohio, have the opportunity to weed out the worst haircut in Congress. Said haircut belongs to Representative James A. Traficant, Jr., a Democrat who faces his first stiff re-election challenge in a 16-year congressional career. Traficant has won a fair amount of national media attention–and has become a favorite…
Only In New York
Clash of the Titans won’t be playing in New York voting booths for another eight months, and already many of us are tired of hearing about it. Yet the battle for U.S. Senate between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani offers so many firsts–and some real if subtle ideological disagreement–that it is required viewing for…
Razing McCain
In South Carolina, the National Right to Life Committee ran radio ads bludgeoning Arizona Senator John McCain. “If you want a strongly pro-life president,” the ads said, “don’t support John McCain.” But McCain has never voted for abortion and until this election has always been known as a pro-life senator. Why the attack ad? The…
From New York to Jerusalem
It might seem odd that a foreign leader charged with conducting complicated statecraft in his own country should involve himself in state-level politics in America. Or that anyone should take notice when the mayor of a foreign town of 700,000 lavishes political favors on the mayor of a U.S. city of almost seven million people.…
Comment: Love-Hate Relationship
With the possible exception of Lyndon Johnson, no modern Democratic president has divided his own core constituency more bitterly than William Jefferson Clinton. The conversation between Clinton’s loyalists and critics, some of it published in these pages, often reads like a dialogue of the deaf. About the only thought both camps share is that Clinton’s…
Benito Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani was in trouble. New Yorkers were up in arms over police brutality against African Americans and heartless government policies against the homeless. And the mayor made an ass of himself with his intolerant stance toward the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It appeared his grip on the city was slipping. But then, in November,…
Fatherhood Matters
Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America, by Cynthia R. Daniels, ed. St. Martins Press, 224 pages, $24.95. The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action, by Wade F. Horn, David Blankenhorn, Mitchell B. Perlstein, eds. Lexington Books, 352 pages, $14.95. Turning the Corner on Father Absence in Black America. A Statement from the Morehouse…
Department of Quixotic Endeavors
For the record, John Anderson, the 77-year-old former Illinois congressman last seen vying for the presidency in 1980 as a third-party candidate, is not running for the Reform Party nomination this year. But that hasn’t stopped his diehard supporters from creating www.draftanderson.org. They’re serious. Indeed the campaign is moving forward with all sincerity, boasting a…
Reckless Predictions
You had no reason to notice it, but The American Prospect was totally Y2K-free this past year. We didn’t run a single article about the disasters that were supposedly going to befall the world after the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve. We also didn’t run any articles giddily anticipating all the wonders that…
How Soft Money Favors the GOP
You’d be forgiven if you thought of the contest for the presidency as two big battles–first, the primary battle to choose each party’s nominee, which this year will be effectively over by the end of March, and then the general election battle, which starts just after the nominating conventions in August and runs through Election…
The Hard Truth about McCain’s Soft Money Ban
Everyone jumped all over John McCain after the news broke that he had intervened with the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of a generous campaign contributor. Here’s a candidate who has made campaign finance reform the centerpiece of his campaign, and he was caught committing a blatant act of favoritism for a contributor. What could…
Health Care and the Entrepreneurial Spririt
Free markets are supposed to have made the United States the world’s most fertile ground for entrepreneurial activity. So how come only about 8 percent of Americans are self-employed, compared with much higher self-employment rates in countries alleged to suffer from “Eurosclerosis?” The United States, for example, trails Belgium (15 percent), France (11 percent), Germany…
Oxleymorons and FM Radio
On January 20, when it lifted the ban on low-power FM (LPFM) broadcasting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened the airwaves to as many as 1,000 new noncommercial radio stations operating at or below 100 watts. The goal of the FCC’s initiative is to counter the consolidation and homogenization of the radio industry that has…
The Resurrection of Michael Milken
Late last summer, the organizers of an annual convention called TechLearn ’99 announced that two of the most famous icons of the 1980s would keynote the event. The first was Bill Cosby, one of the decade’s most popular entertainers; the second was Michael R. Milken, the “junk bond king” who became a symbol of the…
Among the Philistines
The Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based foundation, strode into the middle of the culture wars last summer and got mugged. Pew proposed spending some $50 million over the next five years in an effort to answer what seems, at first blush, like a reasonable question: Is the United States doing all it should to foster…
Opus Posthumous
This last year in the arts seems to have been dominated by dead people. Maybe that isn’t inappropriate when a millennium grinds to a close. For example: One of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year, Eyes Wide Shut, was released soon after the death of its director, Stanley Kubrick. Such were the circumstances…
John Brown: Triumphant Failure
“John Brown taught us that the cheapest price to pay for liberty is its cost today.” –W.E.B. Du Bois In his 1928 epic poem John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benét named the problem of John Brown in America’s historical memory: The law’s our hardstick, and it measures well, Or well enough when there are yards…
The Disappearing Movie House
One of the most accomplished and moving American films of recent years is David Riker’s The City (La Ciudad), the recipient of many international film festival awards. It was shot over a period of six years, and depicts the everyday struggles of Central American and Mexican immigrants in New York. Its emotional integrity, stunning black-and-white…
