Politics
Black and Right
Frederick Douglass remarked that “the Republican Party is the deck, all else is the sea.” It was the Republican Party, after all, that had been organized in 1854 to prevent the extension of slavery. It was Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. And it was the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction who issued the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, outlawing slavery and granting citizenship and voting rights to blacks. READ MORE >>
Supreme Courtier
Live Souls
The Red plotters in Moscow preyed upon, and planned to exploit, two basic biological feelings: fear and hunger. For the former they had tanks; for the latter, sausages. Cynical imbeciles, that is to say, typical products of "materialistic philosophy," they regarded the people as Pavlovian dogs. READ MORE >>
The Child Monarch
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon (Simon and Schuster, 948 pp., $24.95) An American Life by Ronald Reagan (Simon and Schuster, 748 pp., $24.95) I. READ MORE >>
All the President's Perks
ON A WARM and sunny spring day Bonnie Newman, then assistant to the president for management and administration of the Bush White House, ate lunch at the Occidental restaurant with two former presidential aides, Jonathan Miller and Christopher Hicks. The restaurant is one block from the White House. As 2 p.m. neared Newman announced that she had to get back to attend a Cabinet meeting. Miller and Hicks offered to walk her back. No need, she said. READ MORE >>
The Power of Myth
Barry Goldwater says of Bill Movers, "Every time I see him, I get sick to my stomach and want to throw up." But the former senator is, yet again, either before or behind his times. Bill Moyers's standing as the conscience of America is one of the stipulated facts of our national life. The Texas Monthly says he is "the standard bearer of the best we see in ourselves." Jennifer Lawson, programming chief of PBS, says he is a "national treasure." Jackie Onassis calls him one of her heroes. Barbara Jordan takes it a step further: "I'd like to see him as president." READ MORE >>
Ol' Blue Lips
The Rape and Rescue of Kuwaiti City
The Spirit Of The Laws
On Reading the Constitution By Laurence H. Tribe and Michael C. Dorf (Harvard University Press, 144 pp., $18.95) READ MORE >>
Feelings of Warmth
Ms. Byatt is more annoyed [with] American publishers who insist on changing English idioms and spellings for American audiences. She got off quite easily in "Possession." The lifts and taps stayed. But, she says, her editors at Random House insisted she make her main character … a sexier guy. READ MORE >>
