Columns

The moment it dawned on me that there might be something to this Internet fad, I remember, was on a day in 1998 when I thought to run an eBay search with the word, “Ypres.” Within seconds I was awash in artifacts — aerial photographs, vases made from artillery shells, antique Michelin guides — having […]

As George W. Bush grows accustomed to job-approval ratings in the middle 30’s, the number of explanations for his travails seems to increase by the day. In this case it’s not success, but failure that has a thousand fathers: the bungling of Katrina, his drive to privatize Social Security, the mistakes in Iraq, even obstructionist […]

“We need a message.” “We need a philosophy.” “We need a simple statement of what we believe, just like the right has.” No meeting of progressives lasts long before these sentiments are expressed. Sometimes a committee will be assigned to frame the new message. The result might be a crisp but banal statement of uncontested […]

In his State of the Union address in January, George W. Bush is widely expected to try to relaunch his presidency. That he needs a new start is a reflection of just how badly his second term has gone, even in the eyes of conservatives. His domestic initiatives regarding Social Security and tax reform are […]

The conservative movement is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwinism’s bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact. In The Origin of Species, published 150 years ago, Darwin amassed […]

There are many things to criticize about the recent report from President Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. Personally, I’m appalled at the report’s call for adding $7 trillion more to the deficit over the next two decades — a catastrophe the panel weirdly styles as “revenue neutral.” If that’s not bad enough, the […]

Many Democratic strategists contend that a battle to block Samuel Alito’s elevation to the Supreme Court is the wrong fight at the wrong time. The Bush presidency is in trouble on so many other fronts: the deceptions that misled the nation into war, the disastrous war itself, the spreading stain of corruption, the bungling of […]

Newt, your 1994 “Contract with America” helped win Congress for Republicans, but as subsequent history has shown, it did less than nothing for America. The nation is in deep trouble, and today’s congressional Republicans are as unpopular as congressional Dems were then. Here’s a 10-point manifesto that, if followed, may both win Congress back for […]

“We here at Squawk Box have been campaigning for politicians to ‘give back their pork’ to help pay for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Our next guest offers up another possibility. He says we should consider following the path of President Lyndon Johnson. In 1968, LBJ enacted a one-year, 10-percent income-tax surcharge to help pay for […]

Most of us do not ordinarily consider our lives to be at stake in matters of public policy. The prospect of an avian flu pandemic, however, puts us all in jeopardy, and if the dilatory response of the Bush administration proves fatal in this case as it did after August 2001, when the president was […]