The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate by Lewis L. Gould (Basic Books, 416 pages, $27.50) During last spring’s fight over the proposed “nuclear option” banning judicial filibusters, it was slightly troubling to hear the Democrats’ repeated paeans to the sacred majesty of the Senate and its anti-majoritarian features […]
Sam Rosenfeld
Sam Rosenfeld, a former web editor for the Prospect, is visiting assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, beginning in September.
Posted inArticle
How He Got Over
A curious American cultural moment occurred immediately after Cassius Clay’s upset TKO of heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964, one that occasionally pops up in ESPN Classic rebroadcasts. Sports announcer Steve Ellis is conducting a post-match interview with Clay in the ring when the new champ starts calling over a friend to appear on camera […]
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Learning The Right Lessons
We’d like to thank George Packer for his response to our “Incompetence Dodge” article. We should also take this opportunity to say that there’s an invaluable trove of reporting in The Assassins’ Gate, and, clearly, on-the-ground experience yields insights that can’t be adduced from an office in Washington. That said, the future of liberal foreign […]
Posted inFeatures
The Incompetence Dodge
The liberal hawks now say the idea of the war wasn’t bad, just its execution. This saves face — and serves a more dangerous function.
Posted inDispatches
Beware of Watchdog
Melanie Sloan is at a loss. “I would never have thought that the Democrats would be so … I just need more words for ‘spineless.’ I don’t have enough,” she says. “She turns around and grabs a thesaurus from her desk. “‘Wimpy,’” she reads, “‘irresolute,’ ‘chicken,’ ‘weak-willed,’ ‘timid,’ ‘lily-livered’ — I like that one — […]
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The Incompetence Dodge
Victory, as John F. Kennedy observed, has a thousand fathers, while defeat is an orphan. Abandoning the orphan that is the Iraq War has clearly been a protracted, painful process for the liberal hawks, those intellectuals and pundits so celebrated back in 2003 for their courage in coming forward to smash liberal expectations and support […]
Posted inSpecial Report
Cruel Convergence
For thousands of children with debilitating mental illnesses, the get-tough juvenile-justice culture of the 1990s could not have come at a worse time. The new punitive policies emerged in tandem with the slow breakdown of the public mental-health system, and the confluence has led to a pervasive criminalization of juvenile mental illness. The excesses of […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Always Political
Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey A. Segal (Oxford University Press, 192 pages, $23.00 ) When John Roberts testified before the Senate in 2003 on his nomination to a federal appellate court, he described a process that had been used to vet judicial candidates while […]
Posted inFeatures
Disorder in the Court
On May 12, leading lights of the conservative movement threw a gala banquet at the Capital Hilton in Washington to honor House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in his moment of need. After dessert and a closing invocation by Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, the crowd of almost 800 rose up and began shuffling out […]
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Majority Bleeder
Here we are at another prescribed deadline for Bill Frist’s detonation of the “nuclear option” to end judicial filibusters. And here we are, watching that deadline get postponed once more. Early last week, everyone in the know seemed sure that the majority leader would pull the trigger in the last days before the Senate begins […]