January 19, 2008
Suppose that the next big terrorist attack on our country comes two weeks after a new Democratic president has taken office. Simultaneous suicide bombings devastate 20 schools and shopping malls around the country, killing 1,500 people. The intelligence agencies believe that at least 20 more trained jihadists, including American citizens, are in the United States planning follow-up attacks.
The...
January 12, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton's New Hampshire comeback was impressive. But I remain convinced that if Barack Obama can show he is tough enough and pragmatic enough to win the presidency and serve with distinction, it would be the best thing that could happen to America and the world.
The "if," of course, is a big one. New Hampshire showed that many Democrats see Clinton as a safer choice....
January 5, 2008
Sometimes it is more important to avoid looking like a bunch of political partisans than it is to reach the most legally sound result.
That was true in the case of Bush v. Gore. The U.S. Supreme Court decision ending the 2000 election litigation and handing the presidency to George W. Bush was legally defensible. But the 5-4 conservative-liberal split -- plus a sloppily written majority opinion...
December 23, 2007
Hillary Rodham Clinton is supposed to be smart. But how smart is it for a woman with such a bad reputation for truthfulness and veracity to put those character traits at the center of the campaign?
The irony of her potshots at Barack Obama's character has hardly gone unnoticed. Nor has the idiocy of her Dec. 2 press release breathlessly revealing that “in kindergarten, Senator Obama...
December 15, 2007
Imagine that U.S. forces capture Osama bin Laden or a high-level lieutenant in Pakistan next month and hand him over to the CIA, amid intelligence reports that a massive new Qaeda attack on America may be imminent.
Should it be illegal for CIA interrogators to try to scare the man into talking by yelling at him? By threatening to slap him? By pretending to be from Egypt's brutal intelligence...
December 8, 2007
Hillary Rodham Clinton is supposed to be smart. But how smart is it for a woman with such a bad reputation for truthfulness and veracity to put those character traits at the center of the campaign?
The irony of her potshots at Barack Obama's character has hardly gone unnoticed. Nor has the idiocy of her December 2 press release breathlessly revealing that "in kindergarten, Senator Obama...
December 1, 2007
Lakhdar Boumediene was abducted almost six years ago from his home in Bosnia and flown to Guantanamo. He may be a bad guy. Or he may not be. We have no idea. The reason is President Bush's continuing war on due process, which has blighted the lives of some unknown number of innocent men while doing vast damage to America's standing in the world.
Boumediene's petition for release, and those of 62...
November 17, 2007
When the Supreme Court voided all federal death-penalty laws in June 1972 -- despite the Constitution's clear intent to allow capital punishment -- three justices explained that these laws had become "cruel and unusual punishment" because they violated "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."
But then, public opinion moved sharply in an...
November 10, 2007
"A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture, or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists.' " [emphasis added]
Such stuff has long been...
November 3, 2007
The surge of Democratic opposition to President Bush's nomination of former Judge Michael Mukasey to be attorney general says a lot about certain Democrats, especially after the initial bipartisan applause for a superbly qualified man who has clearly repudiated Bush's previous claims of near-dictatorial powers.
It is especially telling that the main congressional objection to Mukasey has been his...
