Failure of Leadership
Last week, the White House released a list of recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that the United States government can afford a civilian. Among the 16 awardees are truly great figures: breast cancer philanthropist Nancy Goodman Brinker, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and Sidney Poitier, the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Failure of Leadership
Last week, the White House released a list of recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that the United States government can afford a civilian. Among the 16 awardees are truly great figures: breast cancer philanthropist Nancy Goodman Brinker, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and Sidney Poitier, the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Must hate the Federal Reserve, neocons and the Trilateral Commission. Having your own tin foil hat a plus. Seeking strong man to envelop me in his protective arms once the coming race war erupts. No limp-wrists. Spend my vacations crashing Bilderberg and Bohemian Grove and need a freedom-loving companion by my side to expose the TRUTH about the Nafta Super-Highway and the Amero. (Background here. And you thought Hannidate was bad). --James Kirchick
Harry Alford: The Conservative Al Sharpton
Some post-July 4th fireworks were on display at a Senate Environmental and Public Works Commitee hearing last week, chaired by Barbara Boxer. You could be forgiven for missing them, as they flew during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings. But the incident was equal parts comical and pathetic, and telling for what it says about the state of today's conservative movement. Testifying was Harry Alford, president and CEO of an outfit called the National Black Chamber of Commerce, an organization which I had never heard of prior to last week, and which Alford runs with his wife.
The afternoon before the White House Correspondents Dinner, I sat down with Meghan McCain, daughter of the erstwhile presidential candidate, to profile her for OUT magazine. McCain has earned herself a remarkable bit of controversy in the relatively short period of time that she's emerged as a pundit, picking fights with the likes of Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and...well, a huge chunk of the Republican Party. Here's what she had to say about Joe the Plumber: Yet even as the balance begins to shift, the old guard is still yapping in the foreground.
When Will Israel Bomb Iran?
Writing at Tablet, Michael Weiss dispels forecasts of an imminent Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear targets, an assumption that was given greater weight by Joe Biden's recent remarks that seemed to give Jerusalem a green light should it feel the time is right.
Change You Can Believe In
"all ready to read Todd Purdum's absurd puff piece on Sarah Palin." -- Andrew Sullivan, June 30, 2009, 4:18 PM "Purdum's...superb summary of the Wasilla whack-job." -- Andrew Sullivan, June 30, 2009, 5:06 PM (h/t Michael Moynihan) Update: Due to late night blogging, the dates on this post were originally 2008. They have since been fixed. --James Kirchick
I.f. Stone: Right About One (big) Thing
The radical journalist I.F. Stone hasn't received much respect in these parts, due to his covert work on behalf of the Soviet Union in the 1930's (work which Stone's defenders refuse to acknowledge as at all morally compromising, preferring to see it as the laudable aiding of a wartime ally). But as TNR senior editor Adam Kirsch shows in a review of D.D. Guttenplan's new biography of Stone, "Izzy" was an early, eloquent and active Zionist, going so far as to aid the illegal emigration of Jews from post-war European displaced person camps to Palestine.
Always Illegitimate
I'll have more to say about the administration's lackluster response (if one can even call it that) to the ongoing events in Iran, but this sentence from today's New York Times story about Vice President Biden's announcement that the White House will "engage" Iran regardless of how many pro-democracy protestors it kills or ballots it stuffs stuck out at me: That cautious reaction reflected the combustible scene in Tehran, where riot police officers were cracking down on angry opposition supporters, and the likelihood that the administration would be forced to pursue its diplomatic initiative
Mission Improbable
As if being the prime minister of Zimbabwe--a nation wracked by economic devastation, starvation, and political oppression for the past decade--was not a difficult enough job, Morgan Tsvangirai must also share power with President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai, who has led the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since its inception in 1999, became prime minister in a power-sharing accord brokered with Mugabe in early February, almost a year after he and the MDC defeated Mugabe and his ZANU-PF in an election fraught with irregularities.
