U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has been gettinghimself dusty in the law library lately. News organizations reported on July 12that Ashcroft, a National Rifle Association member, had reversed the JusticeDepartment’s long-standing constitutional interpretation of the Second Amendment(which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of afree State, the right of the people […]
Chris Mooney
Chris Mooney is a Prospect senior correspondent and, most recently, author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatened Our Future (with Sheril Kirshenbaum).
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Jumping the Gun
The Weekly Standard ran a story in July titled “Taking the Second Amendment Seriously,” its cover art showing the weather-stained statue of what looks like a militiaman. The article–actually a thick chunk of legalese by George Mason law professor Nelson Lund–turns out to be the latest conservative gush-fest over an April 1999 federal district court […]
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The Real Gun Crisis
It was Sunday morning, Mother’s Day. In Washington, D.C., the Clintons were welcoming Million Mom Marchers at the White House before their rally, while near the Washington Monument, the Second Amendment Sisters were beginning to assemble. But in North Michigan, in the town of Menominee near the Wisconsin border, it was also the morning after […]
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Localizing Globalization
In 1999, after a study by the university of California at Davis warned that the chemical MTBE may cause cancer in humans, California became the first U.S. state to phase out its use as a gasoline additive. (MTBE from leaking underground storage tanks contaminates soil and groundwater.) But the Canadian corporation Methanex, which produces the […]
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Mothers of Invention
As the political season heated up, the mass media delightedly revived a favorite clash-of the-titans saga from the mid-1980s: the supposed battle between outspoken rock star Frank Zappa and Tipper Gore over nasty lyrics peddled by the music industry. With Tipper Gore much in the news, and then with the selection of the high-minded Joe […]
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A Fox in Sheep’s Clothing
It was a moment that had political junkies, just out of bed for the Sunday morning talk shows and slurping cereal milk, snarfing with laughter. Asked by ABC’s Sam Donaldson to comment on Pat Buchanan’s build-a-wall protectionist views on the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox responded, “Is he still alive?” The real Fox-Buchanan joke […]
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Better All the Time
War appears to be on the verge of making everyone — except for a few U.C. Berkeley students (see below) — sane. As George Will recently observed, because of the present conflict, “Both conservatism and liberalism have been purified by being purged of some anachronistic ingredients.” Conservatives have given up on their more radical anti-federalist […]
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We Aren’t the World:
Chances are most liberals aren’t familiar with the Left Behind series, the set of apocalyptic mega-bestsellers penned by the fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. But if you want some insight into conservative rage over the recent booting of the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Commission — where it has held […]
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Preemptive Peace
The Idea Log is a new column by Chris Mooney. It will appear on TAP Online every Tuesday. After attending last Saturday’s 7,500 person peace march in downtown Washington, D.C., sponsored by “International A.N.S.W.E.R.” (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), I was left with a rather odd conclusion: The protesters hadn’t watched enough […]
