A closer look at shifting power dynamics in Iran The election crisis in Iran this summer riveted the world with scenes of dramatic demonstrations and a brutal crackdown that left hundreds dead. But the aftermath of the elections marked a subtle shift in the regime’s power structure: the ascent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a central political ... Read More
Obama would do well to learn from the post-Oslo experiences of two other Presidents The Nobel Prize Committee’s recent decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama touched off a firestorm across the world. Reactions have ranged from rancor from much from the right wing for the supposed lack of justification, to delight from the American left and ... Read More
Chris, I fear, has read too much into my use of the word “reactionary.” I meant only to suggest that Republicans have gone with libertarianism over, say, Huckabee-ism or Olympia Snowe-ism, because they are reacting to Obama’s ambitious economic progressivism. This is exactly what we would expect from a minority party: the majority gets to lay out its agenda first, ... Read More
Georgia’s troubles in the aftermath of the Ossetia conflict The South Ossetia conflict last August was a tragic farce that ran its full course in barely a week, inviting paraphrasing Porfirio Diaz’s saying about Mexico; poor Georgia, so far from God and so close to Russia! In days, it re-established Russian superiority in the Caucasus and ignominiously ended the Bush-era ... Read More
New role, new tactics for Kathleen Sebelius In December 1999, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Kathleen Sebelius expressed concern that new privacy rules imposed by the federal department of Health and Human Services would undercut state jurisdiction over health information. Federal bureaucracy, she argued, could not handle enforcement as nimbly as the states. A decade later, Sebelius will have the opportunity to ... Read More
Thoughts on a career in politics While still in high school, I read a book by Pete Carril, who for 29 years coached a series of exceptionally disciplined basketball teams at Princeton University, in which he recounted a lesson from his childhood. “In this life,” Carril’s father would tell him and his sister every morning, “the big, strong guys are ... Read More
Afghanistan and the reevaluation of NATO According to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s founding documents, member nations “are determined to… promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.” Almost sixty years later, NATO is mired in longstanding and unprecedented involvement in Afghanistan, a nation far outside the organization’s geographic sphere. Founded during the Cold War era, NATO’s original purpose ... Read More
The struggle to forge a successor to the Kyoto Protocol “Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible,” warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 report. This dire prophecy concerns the whole world; while developing nations are perhaps most at risk due to their limited adaptive capacities, all countries could suffer a lowered ... Read More
Crucial crossroad, or more of the same? Every election cycle, we are told that the future of the Supreme Court, and particularly the future of abortion jurisprudence, is at stake. This election-centric view infects the mainstream media, which routinely publish October headlines like “This time, Roe v. Wade really could hang in the balance,” as the Los Angeles Times declared ... Read More
The GOP's push to recovery is not an easy one
Methods of appointing State Supreme Court judges That law be applied fairly and impartially is a defining ideal of the American legal system. Yet while impartiality lies at the foundation of our courts, it is surprisingly difficult to achieve. Charles Hall, director of communications for Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan campaign for “fair and impartial” courts, told the HPR that ... Read More
Let me leap to the defense of Damon Linker once again, partly out of appreciation for his link to our humble blog. Linker, following Rawls, thinks that we can separate issues of “mere life” from those of “the good life.” That is, the liberal state can and should address issues of common security and welfare, while leaving for its citizens ... Read More
Alex’s recent blog post about UBS reminded me of a story I read in today’s New York Times about an Israeli spy living in Lebanon. Despite the fact that he was recruited in 1983 by the Israeli government and had been actively spying since then, according to the article, the red flag that raised suspicions of those around him was ... Read More
Here referring not to disdain of the volk, but rather to rule by elites. Obama’s presidency is going to confront a number of entrenched, very powerful elites who will clash in very significant ways, so I thought I’d take a stab at a quick rundown. Educated Elite: Easily the largest group here, but the least institutionally entrenched. Their sole institutional ... Read More
It’s somewhat unclear what exactly Senators Nelson, Collins, Specter and Snowe were aiming for in the cuts they demanded from the Senate stimulus bill. They didn’t dispute the need for a large economic stimulus, nor did they offer a detailed critique of why spending on school construction or state aid would be “less stimulative” than other far less stimulative measures ... Read More
