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Should a Student Who Wants a Theology Degree Be Eligible for a State Scholarship? NO

by Washington State

The Supreme Court is presently considering a case, Locke V. Davey, that raises questions about the history of American bigotry toward Catholics. Joshua Davey, a student in Washington State, sued when he was denied a scholarship to fund his theology degree. Washington denied the scholarship on the grounds that the state constitution forbids the mixing of church and state. When the case went to the ninth circuit court of appeals, the state lost.Like

Should a Student Who Wants a Theology Degree Be Eligible for a State Scholarship? YES

by Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Catholic League

The Supreme Court is presently considering a case, Locke V. Davey, that raises questions about the history of American bigotry toward Catholics. Joshua Davey, a student in Washington State, sued when he was denied a scholarship to fund his theology degree. Washington denied the scholarship on the grounds that the state constitution forbids the mixing of church and state. When the case went to the ninth circuit court of appeals, the state lost.Like

The Bush Court Nominee Who Wants to Roll Back the New Deal

by Jonathan Rees

President Bush has nominated Janice Rogers Brown, a California Supreme Court justice, to a seat on the important U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Like some other conservative Bush judges, her nomination has proved extremely controversial. Initial press coverage of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee centered on a speech she gave to the Federalist Society at the University of Chicago Law School in 2000. In that

Column: Politicians' Addiction to Indian Gambling Profits

by William Thompson

Recently, I was on the "Factor" with Bill O'Reilly himself. The topic was Native American casinos. Bill had his position--tribal gambling was "out of control." I agreed. The notion of "out of control" appears "in spades" in recall campaigns ongoing in California. A governor unabashedly panders to tribes offering quid pro quos that tribes will select members of a casino commission. The lt. governor governor-wannabe has hands out for m

W's PR Offensive Is a Sign of Desperation

by P. M. Carpenter

By late 1967, President Lyndon Johnson's failing war in Vietnam had pretty much driven him bananas. He remained determined to win an unwinnable ground war he had bamboozled Congress to support, leaving the contradiction to exhaust his composure. War critics and reporters persisted in asking disturbingly fundamental questions - such as "Why are we there?" - convincing answers to which the commander in chief did not possess. The pressure to justify the unjustifiable became un

Just How Cynical Is George W?

by P. M. Carpenter

We have all heard 43's rhetorical drumbeat of "coalition" forces having remedied matters in The Evil Empire's latest incarnation. Said empire - or rather regime, regime, regime; another of his drumbeats - is now well on its way to beatitude. We can thank not the towering behemoth of the U.S military for this deed, but the sainted "Coalition of the Willing." In the beginning Bush claimed this vague international federation simply refused to tolerate Saddam's

Interview with Gerald Posner: Why America Slept

HNN: Let’s start with the end of the book. I was surprised not to find a chapter in which you summed up your conclusions. What is your main conclusion? Why did America sleep?Posner: I want the readers to draw their own conclusions. We slept for so many different reasons, and they all combined to create an atmosphere in which a 9.11 type attack was inevitable. The fighting and rivalry between the CIA and FBI that made both less effec

Could the War Change the Debate Over Affirmative Action?

by Jim Sleeper

Only a few weeks ago, some of us were bracing for an attack of déjà vu all over again in the form of the old familiar arguments the Supreme Court is likely to hear on April 1 for and aginst the University of Michigan's racially weighted admissions policies. But in the thunder of the attack on Iraq the likely claims about "diversity" in the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger cases could well resonate in ways few of us expected. Some argum

Why Americans Are Right to Be Suspicious of Mr. Bush's Tax Cuts

by Jonathan Dresner

The tax proposals of President Bush -- elimination of taxes on estates and dividend income -- fly in the face of modern economics, retreating to a discredited mercantilist view of wealth, and will hamper our government's ability to carry out social and economic projects including defense and security. Mercantilism, once the dominant economic theory of the West, measures the prosperity of a nation by the sheer quantity of money within its borders. Mercantilism drov

After Columbia: Now What?

by Jonathan Coopersmith

Space is dangerous. And, consequently, expensive. That first fact was brought painfully home the morning of Feb. 1 as the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated while reentering the earth's atmosphere. The second fact will be relearned in the coming weeks as we emerge from our shock at this tragedy and decide where our space program should go from here. Cost, not risk, may prove the decisive factor.The loss of Columbia was a visible disaster that should fittingly reignite the debate about the safety of the shuttle and spark a reassessment of NASA's goals, as well as discussion about the role of human beings in space. In the history of technology, a visible disaster is a failure of a technology in such a public manner that long-standing issues can no longer be ignored.Sadly, it often takes the loss of life, like that on February 1, to focus attention and resources on problems that many knew about but lacked the political power or will to resolve. International politics is no longer the important factor it was in previous space disasters, and such considerations need not influence the choices we face, which can thus be made on their own merits.

Why Brandishing the Threat of Nukes Could Boomerang

by Ira Chernus

The Pentagon has put out the word that the United States might use nuclear weapons in a preventive war against Iraq. That's not a new idea. Nuclear threats and talk of preventive nuclear strikes have been with us since the early days of the Cold War. Now, as then, threatening words will probably do more harm than good, even if they are never translated into action. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower committed the U.S. government to a first-strike nuclear policy. He told his ad

Is W. the Biggest Liar Since LBJ?

by P.M. Carpenter

Not since the Johnson-Nixon era has an American president's credibility been so abysmal. Persistent lies about foreign policy -- how we got into Vietnam, why we were staying in and how we were faring militarily and politically -- forced early retirement on a discredited LBJ. Even Lyndon had had enough, already. And though Richard Nixon ran with experts when it came to foreign policy fibs, the fatuous cover-up of domestic misdemeanors chiefly strangled his credibility and finally se

The Politicians Who Celebrate Jeff Davis

by William B. Gould IV

New Year's Day marked the 140th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom for slaves in the 13 states that were in rebellion. At the time, Confederate President Jefferson Davis characterized Lincoln's order as "the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man." Davis' response also promised to execute captured Union officers for "inciting servile insurrection," though the threat was pulled back.

Taking Abortion for Granted

by Ruth Rosen

"BONNIE SWAIN," now age 61, got pregnant in her second year of college. She came home, told her parents, who begged their family physician to perform an illegal abortion. He agreed. Five years later, she married and had two sons. Today, she is the proud grandmother of six grandchildren and says she has never regretted what she did. That's not the kind of story the anti-abortion movement wants you to hear. Nor do they want us to remember how many children

President Bush's State of the Union Address

If Government Ran the Newspapers

by HNN Staff

"Secretary of Treasury Paul H. O'Neill announces his resignation, effective in the next few weeks."--MSNBC Breaking News Bulletin 12-6-02 6:23am (PST)The "White House News - Weekly Review" -- is a weekly e-mail update "designed to keep you informed of the major events and speeches by the President and his Administration." This was the email sent out Friday Dece

Trent Lott's Faux Pas: What Historians Think

by HNN Staff

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either. -- Trent Lott, December 5, 2002 Douglas Brinkley Robert Dallek

What Makes for a Strong President?

by Jeffrey Bell

Just before the recent elections, I half-attentively watched Norman Ornstein explaining to a television interviewer that President Bush was taking an enormous risk by campaigning for so many marginal Republican candidates. The reason I was half-attentive is that it wasn't the first such analysis I'd heard.

Text of the Joint Resolution on the Use of Force Against Iraq

Text: Joint Congressional Resolution October 11, 2002 Text of a resolution passed by the House and Senate.Passed by the House 296 to 133.Passed by the Senate77 to 23.Joint Resolution to Authorize the use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regim

Why Daniel Ellsberg Is Still Relevant

by Ruth Rosen

Daniel Ellsberg’s just-published memoir, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers is a page-turner. The Vietnam War shaped and shadowed both of our lives for more than a decade. I, however, was a young nobody. He was the consummate insider, a brilliant military policy analyst, who enjoyed access to top-secret information, as well as to high government officials. Why, then, I kept asking myself, did it take him so long to openly oppose the Vietnam