United States Archives - Page 18 of 73

Blue Monday

Nancy Pelosi May Be Too Clever for Our Own Good

Why only unambiguous opposition to Trump can save us

May 6, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Last week a New York Times profile of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reported that Pelosi wants the Democrats to “stay in the center,” insisting that for the party to succeed in 2020 it must “own the mainstream.” Pelosi, currently the most powerful Democrat in public office, has surely sought ...

Nancy Pelosi May Be Too Clever for Our Own Good

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Why John Dewey Should Matter to Historians

The role of knowledge and truth in the Constitutional order was Dewey’s central project

May 6, 2019 • by David A. Hollinger

This essay was originally published on May 6 2019. These Truths: A History of the United States is the book that Henry Steel Commager tried to write forty years ago, but did not. Commager’s 1979 volume, Empire of Reason, took seriously the Enlightenment foundation for the nation, but his account of the many ...

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Asymmetric Legality

The Invisibility of High-Tech Violence in Afghanistan

May 2, 2019 • by Christiane Wilke

The decision by the International Criminal Court’s pre-trial chamber to not authorize a full investigation into the “situation” in Afghanistan has served as a reminder that international criminal justice is political: it depends on political support and it shapes political debates about armed conflict, violence, and justice. Yet a closer ...

North America

The New “Infrastructure Deal” is a Political Disaster

Why legislative tacticians make bad political leaders

April 30, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

In the past 24 hours four things of direct political importance to the ongoing saga of the Trump Maladministration have occurred: (1) the Barr Justice Department, and the Trump administration more generally, has escalated its battle of wills with the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, refusing to comply with requests for ...

The New “Infrastructure Deal” is a Political Disaster

Blue Monday

On Trump’s Dangerous Words

Why We Need to Use the Word “Impeachment” Now

April 29, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

We humans are many things. One is that we are beings who understand, construct, and change our world in and through language. In the beginning there were words. The late great writer and dissident-citizen-president, Vaclav Havel, said it well in his powerful 1989 acceptance speech to the German Booksellers Association, “Words ...

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Trump and the San Diego Synagogue Shooting

The President Plays with Fire, and The Rest of Us Get Burned

April 28, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

My mind was reeling. I was writing a column about Trump’s speech to the National Rifle Association in Indianapolis when I learned of yesterday’s (Saturday) synagogue shooting in California by a white supremacist. The connection between these two events was immediate and obvious to me, as I will briefly explain in ...

Trump and the San Diego Synagogue Shooting

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Richard Rorty: The Dark Years

The philosopher’s vision of what is dangerous and yet possible

April 26, 2019 • by Richard J. Bernstein

The passages below are selections from “Richard Rorty: The Dark Years.” Introduction No one was more acute than American philosopher Richard Rorty in echoing and epitomizing the accusations and taunts of his critics. In “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” he tells us that conservative culture warriors characterize him “one of the relativistic, ...

North America

Toxic Language Alert for Campaign 2020

Confusing populism with demagoguery isn’t good for democracy

April 26, 2019 • by Robert Ivie

This essay was originally published on April 26 2016. In early April 2019, The Washington Post’s adversarial columnist Dana Milibank dubbed Bernie Sanders “the Donald Trump of the left,” noting perfunctorily at the end of his column that his wife, Anna Greenberg, “works for John Hickenlooper, a Democratic presidential candidate.” One can assume ...

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Further Thoughts on Impeachment as Political Strategy

Do it to expose and weaken Trump and the Republicans for 2020

April 25, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The argument about impeachment continues, as it should. Yesterday I laid out the general case for impeachment. My argument was not ethical or legal, it was political: impeachment is a legitimate constitutional process that ought to be pursued not because it will remove Trump from office -- Senate Republicans will surely ...

Further Thoughts on Impeachment as Political Strategy

Blue Monday

Two Cheers for Impeachment

The political “risks” are not that great, and they are worth taking

April 22, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

In an ideal world, the thought of impeaching Donald Trump would warrant at least three cheers, along with some somersaults and a marching band (my preference would be for a New Orleans Second Line led by Trombone Shorty). Yet in an ideal world Donald Trump would be nothing but a ...

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Reading the Mueller Report

You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime you just might find — you know how to read.

April 21, 2019 • by Claire Potter

I understand why you wouldn’t want to read the whole thing through: it’s really long, repetitive and dull. But most of all, you will want to react before reading because you just wanted the Trump presidency to be over, right? You wanted Robert Mueller to make the case for why ...

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A Quick Thought on ‘No Collusion’: Not!

There may not have been criminal “conspiracy,” but there was obvious collusion and the Mueller Report makes it clear.

April 18, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Everyone paying attention to the Mueller report and the complex and extremely disturbing conditions surrounding its handling by Attorney General Barr, acting as a clear ally of Trump, is still processing the just-released report and the press conference that preceded it. It is clear that Barr was extremely misleading in ...