Newsweek

One of the remarkable things about the gathering at USIP [United States Institute of Peace] was the diversity of stakeholders represented. Here’s a snapshot:

Think tanks - including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the New America Foundation and the Center for American Progress.

Policy makers from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

Representatives from faith-based organizations, including the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the Islamic Society of North… more

In Barack Obama's now famous remarks to rich donors in San Francisco in early April, he attributed the fact that white Democrats in small towns were resisting his candidacy to their anger over their economic misfortune. "They get bitter," Obama said, "and cling to guns or religion... as a way to explain their frustration." Obama seemed to be implying that social conservatism is a toxic byproduct of economic distress -- and it may have hurt him in Pennsylvania last week,… more

June 18, 2007 issue - Michael Moore is a uniquely American hybrid: the profit-making, anti-establishment agitator. In that line of work, your instincts have to be sharp. His are. In films that mix brave journalism and brazen agitprop, he has been ahead of the curve on the demise of heavy industry; the deadly blend of teenage rage and the gun culture, and the shaky reasoning behind, and execution of, the Iraq War. In person, he is a friendly bear of… more

"Pimp My Ride" isn't the sort of television program one watches for a lesson in eco-consciousness. Each week on the MTV reality show, one lucky teenager's old clunker is transformed into an outrageously appointed dream car...For today's episode, "Pimp My Ride" has invited a man who knows a thing or two about muscle. Peering under the crimson and white hood of a pimped-out '65 Chevy Impala, Arnold Schwarzenegger all but caresses the new 800-horsepower engine, which has been overhauled to… more

Antonio Villaraigosa may not realize it, but his election as mayor of America's second largest city borrows a page from Al Smith. Like a lot of Irish-American politicians of his day, Smith knew how to play the ethnic card to great effect. After all, "shamrock politics" had helped the Irish establish a firm grasp on power throughout the Northeast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But as Smith rose through the ranks in New York politics, from speaker… more

The United States will soon be at war with Iraq. It would seem, on the face of it, a justifiable use of military force. Saddam Hussein runs one of the most tyrannical regimes in modern history.

For more than 25 years he has sought to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and has, in several documented cases, succeeded. He gassed 60,000 of his own people in 1986 in Halabja. He has launched two catastrophic wars, sacrificing nearly a million Iraqis and… more

When it comes to foreign policy, George W. Bush has broken radically with the bipartisan tradition of liberal internationalism, shared by both his father and Bill Clinton. Even before 9-11, he was repudiating treaties, ignoring the United Nations and sidelining NATO allies. The administration has announced a grandiose global strategy of unilateral American domination, even as it has abandoned its time-honored role of honest broker in the Middle East and embraced, almost completely, Ariel Sharon's war of occupation against millions… more

Conservatives who support "regime change" in Iraq might reflect that the forthcoming war for Baghdad is likely to change the government here in the U.S. as well. Indeed, a close look at a new document published on Friday by the White House, "The National Security Strategy of the United States," shows that the despairing wisdom of the early- 20th-century American anti-war radical Randolph Bourne -- "war is the health of the state" -- has been proven yet again.

Put simply,… more

It's almost human nature: if you're allowed the use of something for enough time, you begin to think you have a right to it, even that you own it. Take broadcast television. Its signals travel by means of the electromagnetic spectrum, specifically that segment known colloquially as the airwaves. The spectrum is a fact of the physical universe. Capital didn't create it. It can't be improved by way of adding value. It's inherently a public resource.

Yet broadcasters treat it… more

Once again, conflict is raging between Israel and the Palestinians--and once again, the U.S. government can see fault only on one side. Even as Israeli soldiers were demolishing his compound and threatening his life, Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat was instructed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to end terrorism against Israel, including that committed by groups Arafat cannot control. What passes in the United States as an evenhanded stance is perceived, not only in the Middle East but… more