Archive for September, 2009

Distortions—or Truths?

We should have “an honest debate” on health care, said Barack Obama in his Aug. 22 radio address, “not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions.”

Among the “phony claims” made against the House bill, says the president, are that it provides funding for abortions, guarantees coverage for illegal aliens, contains “death panels” and represents a federal takeover of the health care system.

EXCLUSIVE: Guns and Roses

When one William Kostric walked into a protest outside a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at which the President of the United States was present, carrying a loaded gun—“Of course it was loaded,” he told Chris Matthews later, “what kind of fool would carry around an unloaded gun?”—he and the movement he purports to represent walked straight into a well-laid trap.

Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the U.S.?

In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week, Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.

The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the U.S. and NATO.

That Kennedy Legacy

The end of Ted Kennedy’s long sojourn among us, splendidly splashed by the media, opened the renewed discussion of whether it’s time that big government, in the Kennedy mode, came back.

The late senator’s eulogists—in politics and the media, not to mention at the funeral—tended to nod their heads enthusiastically. We needed the big ideas and projects of the senator’s legacy for the sake of justice and the future.

Did Hitler Want War?

On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.

Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.