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Rebuilding Hurricane-Devastated Areas- Why Not Follow LBJ’s Lead?

by Kevin R. Kosar

Last week, U.S. representatives and senators from Louisiana introduced the “Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act” into Congress. The total cost of the bill popped quite a few eyes- $250 billion. The bill (S. 1765) runs over 400 pages and seeks funds for just about everything one could imagine. Some of the objects of funding seems perfectly reasonable--who, for example, would object to federal funds being used to repair damaged veterans’ medical facili

Why Real Reforms May Just Follow the Abramoff Scandal

by Nancy C. Unger

Will the guilty plea of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff to charges of bribing public officials, tax evasion and fraud succeed in getting Congress to rein in lobbyists? Can any good really come out of congressional efforts to thwart corruption? The cynics say no. Yet democratic reforms have come out of past scandals. Many pessimists claim that reform is impossible because the United States today is suffering the worst corruption in the history of Congress. Even a cursory look at Congress i

White Ethnics Not Just Innocent Victims in America's Culture Wars

by Mark Naison

Anyone reading David Brooks's column on Samuel Alito's experiences at Princeton ("Losing the Aliotos" NY Times January 12 2006) would get the impression that families like Mr Alioto's were innocent victims of a liberal Kulturkampf in the late 60's which undermined values such as Hard Work, Patriotism and Respect for Authority which were articles of faith in white ethnic neighborhoods. But wha

Academic Jarheads?

by Jim Sleeper

One of the dubious contributions of the movie "Jarhead" to American popular culture involved showing that some Marines in Iraq call their corps "The Suck." That's not quite the dismissal of all moral meaning you hear when a friend says of some bad situation that "It sucks." The Suck is more and less than that. It gives institutional concreteness - in this case, the U.S. Marine Corps -- to the macho admonition to "Suck it up," to prove you can take a belly

The Bush Administration's Dangerous Impulsive Responses to Immediate Challenges

by Joyce Appleby

Retrospectively we can see that our Founding Fathers possessed a marvelous combination of realism, pragmatism and idealism. They even anticipated the particular way that the administration of George W. Bush would put our democracy at risk. Americans must connect the dots soon if they are to save the Republic from the present-mindedness guiding current policies. In America’s most famous political essay, Federalist No. 10, James Madison identified faction as the mortal [not wounding,

If this is Such a Conservative Era, Why Is the White House Downplaying Alito's Rightwing Views?

by Leonard Steinhorn

If conventional wisdom is correct and conservatism is on the rise in America, why has the Bush administration tried to hide and finesse the conservative views of its Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr.? If this is such a conservative era, why isn't the White House aggressively promoting Alito's opposition to abortion, narrow view of discrimination, and support for Christianity in the public square? The answer is that the country is far more socially liberal than the c

The Mirage that Is Derailing the Rebuilding of New Orleans

by Ari Kelman

The flood was voracious; it swallowed whole neighborhoods, ending hundreds of lives. But the battered levees have been repaired. They again stand between New Orleans and catastrophe, holding the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain in check. The antique drainage system, too, is back online. Any water that falls in the city, every drop of rain or tear shed, ultimately flows through canals until it's pumped over the levee into the lake. This is how New Orleans has been engineered: to control stra

Is Bush Just Following Lincoln's Example?

by William C. Kashatus

Does President Bush have the constitutional authority, as he claims, to order the warrantless surveillance of suspected al-Qaida agents in the United States? Yes he does, say some, who point to Abraham Lincoln's suspension of writs of habeas corpus during the Civil War to defend their position. Then and now they argue, the commander-in-chief during wartime has an obligation to place national security above Fourth Amendment safeguards that protect the privacy of the individual.

Why the Court's Dover Decision Is a Triumph for Religion as well as Science

by Brian W. Ogilvie

Federal Judge John E. Jones IIIs December 20th verdict in Kitzmiller v. Dover that Intelligent Design is thinly-disguised creationism, and thus cannot be taught in public high schools, is a triumph for science and for the separation of church and state. But Christians should see it as a triumph for religion, too. Supporters of Intelligent Design do not do science as its done today: designing experiments, collecting data, and submitting papers to peer-reviewed journals. They co

The Democrats' Message on Iraq Is Confusing--And Should Be

by Kevin Mattson

For a brief moment, it seemed as if Democrats might actually stand as an opposition party, ready to lead a united cry against the war in Iraq. But now all we hear is a deafening sound of disagreement and disunity. The only certainty among Democrats is that they don’t stand united for immediate withdrawal and, following that, they can’t figure out what should be done in Iraq. All of this probably explains why while President Bush’s poll numbers plummet, the Democrats’

How the Anti-Evolution Debate Has Evolved

by Charles A. Israel

In this last month of the year, when many Americans’ thoughts are turning to holidays—and what to call them—we may miss another large story about the intersections of religion and public life. Last week a federal appeals court in Atlanta listened to oral arguments about a sticker pasted, and now removed, from suburban Cobb County, Georgia’s high school science textbooks warning that evolution is a “theory, not a fact.” The three-judge panel will take their

Ducking Out on Retiree Benefits

by Jennifer Klein

With the passage of a Senate bill shoring up private pension plans, public attention is finally turning to"legacy costs" -- what Wall Street bankers and corporate executives call long-promised retiree benefits. And not a minute too soon. After a decade of underfunding their pension plans, flagship American corporations have now been ducking behind the closed doors of bankruptcy court to dispose of employee pensions. It's time to ask: whose legacy is it, anyway? Ge

On the Passing of Gene McCarthy

by Bruce Craig

Visitors who venture into my office at the American Historical Association often comment on a framed, signed print of a poem entitled “The Aardvark” written by former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, who died this past Saturday. Below the poem is a frayed photograph that shows a picture of a very young Bruce Craig standing in a row of campaign volunteers next to the vigorous, smiling McCarthy. It was taken back in 1976 when I worked on what was the then former Minnesota senator&rsq

Eugene McCarthy: 1916-2005

by Jon Wiener

When I read that Gene McCarthy died on December 10, I remembered how he had called me last year after I wrote about him in The Nation. I had said he was"a mysterious and frustrating figure," and that"nothing he did before 1968 hinted that he would become the liberals' antiwar leader...and nothing he did after 1968 accomplished much of anything." (The piece was a review of a biography by Dominic Sandbrook,"No Success Like Failure

The Worst President Ever on Civil Liberties?

by Samuel Walker

In an informal poll last year, professional historians rated George W. Bush the worst president ever in American history. It is a bit early to begin rating a president who still has two more years to serve, and time and events could change that judgement. On civil liberties issues, Bush clearly has the worst record of any president. He has led an all-out assault on the separation of church and state, abortion rights and gay and lesbian ri

George W. Bush, Peace President?

by Rick Shenkman

The audience has tired of George W. Bush’s performance as a war president. If he wants to save his presidency he will have to pivot like a ballet dancer and become our peace president.He has gotten about as much as he can out of his role as a war president. Continuing in the role will only assure further declines in his popularity. Only by nimbly switching to our peace president does he have a chance to recover.President Bush until now has been able expertly to capitalize

Strong Objections: Another Best-Selling Author Complains About Plagiarism

by William R. Hutchison

Heated debates concerning the effects of contemporary immigration have not let up since Samuel P. Huntington expressed his worries, nearly two years ago, about what he called “the Hispanization of America.” Nor has this controversy ever been circumscribed in space or time; it hasn’t been just a preoccupation of elite East and West Coast subscribers to Foreign Policy (where Huntington’s analysis first raised a storm in early 2004). Even so, I was astounded rec

Dear President Sexton: About the Strike

by Jesse Lemisch

"NEW YORK UNIVERSITY'S PRESIDENT warned striking teaching assistants on Monday that those who fail to return to the classroom by December 5 will lose their teaching assignments -- and stipends -- for the spring semester."--Chronicle of Higher Education 11-29-95 To: John Sexton, President, New York University [mailto:john.sexton@nyu.edu] From: Jesse Lemisch, Professor Emeritus of History, John

Historians vs. George W. Bush

by Robert S. McElvaine

Editor's Note 12-5-05: This article was first published 19 months ago. It was referred to in an article by Richard Reeves on Dec. 2, attracting wide notice. Readers are encouraged to post fresh comments by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page. (FYI: To see the graphics displayed on this page in a larger format click here.)Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.

The “Invitation Only” Presidency of George W. Bush

by Michael A. Genovese and Lori Cox Han

In order to govern effectively, presidents devise complex strategies for wooing the public. They do this because it is widely believed that if a president has high popularity ratings, moving the baroque system of government becomes a bit easier. In short, popularity greases the wheels of government. A great deal of time is spent devising and implementing strategies for what presidential scholar Tom Cronin has called the “theatrical presidency,” and presidents use the bully