The New Republic

At first, McCarthyism was a partisan affair. Wisconsin’s junior senator rocketed to political stardom in February 1950, when he told the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, that Harry Truman’s State Department was infested with Communists. As that year’s midterm campaign progressed, Joe McCarthy’s staff helped doctor a photo of Maryland Democrat Millard Tydings, making him appear to be huddled with former U.S. Communist Party chief Earl Browder. READ MORE >>

READ ABOUT U.S. EFFORTS to seal the Mexican border, and you quickly encounter two words. The first is futile. Take this June 5 dispatch in U.S. News & World Report, which reports on the "deep sense of futility" about illegal immigration in the town of Nogales, on the Arizona-Mexico border. "The number of Border Patrol agents has increased more than 200 percent in less than 15 years.... Yet the number of people estimated to cross the border illegally each year has remained fairly constant, at about half a million. READ MORE >>

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Of course George W. Bush should fire Donald Rumsfeld--it's no longer an interesting debate. Even the Iraq war's most fervent supporters--people like John McCain--have denounced Rumsfeld's refusal to send enough troops to secure Baghdad in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's fall. Rumsfeld's support is now concentrated among people less invested in the survival of Iraq than in the survival of Bush. And, even on the right, their numbers are dwindling fast. READ MORE >>

Hillary Clinton, congratulations. You’re the lucky recipient of a winning political issue, which has the added virtue of being morally important. Send your thanks to Columbia University and the U.S. Supreme Court.   This week, the Court unanimously upheld the Solomon Amendment, which denies government funding to universities that prohibit military recruiting on campus. The ruling’s practical implications aren’t entirely clear, but they thrust an old, ugly issue back into the national spotlight: the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). READ MORE >>

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE professors. Many of my relatives, too. I'd probably be one myself, had I done better in graduate school. But, this week at least, I'm glad I chose another line of work, because the most prestigious professoriate in the world, Harvard's, has just made an ass of itself. READ MORE >>

The riots currently engulfing the Islamic world, prompted by a Danish newspaper’s decision to caricature the Prophet Mohammed, require two responses. The first is easy: horror. In the physical assault on Denmark’s embassies and citizens, and in the diplomatic assault on Denmark’s government—all because a free government won’t muzzle a free press—multiculturalism has become totalitarianism. Religious sensitivity, say the zealots marching from Beirut to Jakarta, matters more than liberty. Indeed, it matters more than life itself. READ MORE >>

IN 2002, REPUBLICANS RAN ON THE war on terrorism. In 2004, they ran on the war on terrorism. And, last week, Karl Rove informed the country that, in 2006, they plan to run on…the war on terrorism. It’s the political equivalent of Groundhog Day. READ MORE >>

Why are MoveOn, Daily Kos, and so many other liberal activists so keen to find a primary challenger against Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman? The more you peel the onion, the stranger the answer becomes. READ MORE >>

Last week, I wrote a cover story in The New Republic arguing that the struggle against Islamist totalitarianism should define contemporary liberalism, as the struggle against Soviet totalitarianism defined liberalism during the early cold war ("A Fighting Faith," December 13). This week, I waded through responses--some supportive, some critical, some both. The most surprising came from Kevin Drum, who writes the blog Political Animal at washingtonmonthly.com. READ MORE >>