christopher_hallam

Will over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen takes issue with my critique of Ross Douthat‘s last column: I mean, what? Other than his willful misinterpretation of the word “foe,” I challenge Serwer to identify anything at all in Douthat’s column that endorses religious warfare between Muslims and Christians. It’s true that Catholicism and Islam […]

Ben Smith has an amusing word count analysis of the Glenn Beck show, which notes that FOX has focused less on international terrorism since the Bush administration left office, and more on domestic issues. There’s not so much cache in the “keeping us safe” argument anymore. First there’s the list of threats Beck has been […]

Fred Kaplan says what needs to be said: General McChrystal should have avoided the question of whether a counter-terrorism strategy, as opposed to a counterinsurgency strategy, would work in Afghanistan while the administration’s review was ongoing, but he wasn’t being insubordinate, and that “McChrystal’s public pronouncement and Gates‘ indirect rebuke fall nowhere near the realm […]

Veronica-Marche Miller‘s piece at The Root, about her parents decision not to live in a “black neighborhood” is really quite stunning: My parents knew back then what we know now about Derrion Albert—that in some neighborhoods, you don’t have to be gang member to get caught up in gang violence and that being a good […]

Peter Bergen has been a consistent and persuasive optimist when it comes to Afghanistan, reminding everyone that the Afghans mostly have a positive view of coalition forces, and concluding that a “renewed and better resourced American effort in Afghanistan will, in time, produce a relatively stable and prosperous Central Asian state.” In his defense of […]

There was a recent CBS/New York Times poll that showed that even after all the sound and fury of August, 46% of Americans said they didn’t know enough about health care reform to support or oppose it. That’s a huge number. But I doubt there’s many Prospect readers among them. Because if you’re a regular […]

Someday soon, I’m going to get back to blogging about issues other than race. But for now, allow me this one last flabbergasted facepalm in response to Rush Limbaugh: I think frankly, a lot of people are asking this question about Obama on everything. Is this worth it? Is the historical relevance of his presidency, […]

There are a number of American political idiosyncracies at play here, but suffice it to say that it would be difficult for any president to refuse a troop request from his top general and because of Democratic Party superstition and village politics, it’s even harder for a Democratic president to do so. So while President […]

Dave Weigel has had much more experience reporting on the Minutemen than I have, so I sent him the questionnaire Jeff Sessions sent to Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division, Thomas Perez. Sessions, of course, who believes groups like the NAACP and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund to be “radical” nonetheless stood […]

I actually agree with Mike Tomasky that injecting race into the health care debate is a lose-lose proposition for Democrats regardless of how much the right’s animus against Obama is motivated by racism–I made a similar argument last year with regards to the election. Democrats shouldn’t be baited into arguing about race with Republicans, and […]