Joe Conason
Despite the kaleidoscopic proliferation of political media over the past decade, most of what Americans hear and read about the workings of our democracy can be politely termed superficial. Only very rarely does journalism fully penetrate the glittering illusions created by partisans on every side to reveal the grittier realities. When a reporter does blast through the usual scrim of deception, that is worth noting—as in the case of Jane Mayer's investigation in the... MORE >
Nothing tests a president like standing up against a wave of fear and prejudice, even at potentially great cost to his own party and prospects. That is what Lyndon Baines Johnson did when he signed the civil rights acts he knew would forfeit the South to the Republicans for a generation or more. And that is what Barack Obama has done by defending the right of American Muslims to build a community center and mosque... MORE >
Among the most revealing aspects of life during the Obama presidency is the panoply of responses to a black family in the White House. What made so many of us proud of our country on Jan. 20, 2009, has increasingly provoked expressions of hatred from the far right. That is troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the behavior of conservatives who excuse, embolden or simply pretend to ignore the bigots surrounding... MORE >
No recent controversy has so plainly revealed the hollow values of the American right than the effort to prevent the construction of a community center in Lower Manhattan because it will include a mosque. Arguments in opposition range from a professed concern for the sensitivities of the 9/11 victims' families to a primitive battle cry against Islam-but what they all share is an arrant disregard for our country's founding... MORE >
The outpouring of tens of thousands of classified military documents by WikiLeaks is not precisely comparable to the publication of the Pentagon Papers-but in at least one crucial respect, it may be more valuable. While the Pentagon Papers revealed the duplicity of American policy makers in the senseless Vietnam War, their release came too late to save many lives or change the course of that conflict. The WikiLeaks disclosures may have arrived in time... MORE >
Back in the bad old days of the cold war-when mutual nuclear annihilation was a policy option-a culture of secrecy arose in Washington. What wise observers understood even then was that while governments tried to keep secrets from each other, their chief concern was to keep secrets from their own people. Considering what had been done in the name of the United States, from Mafia assassination plots against foreign leaders to murder, corruption and... MORE >
The headline for the latest poll says that public confidence in President Obama has sunk to a new low, with a majority of Americans saying they don't trust him to make the best policy choices, especially on the ailing economy. These same voters, surveyed by The Washington Post and ABC News, are even more disdainful of Congress, split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Those numbers may portend a shift in partisan control of... MORE >
So often are the certitudes and pronouncements of the chattering class simply mistaken that they must always be treated with deep skepticism. That is especially true when anything important is at stake-from the arguments for invading Iraq several years ago to today's economic stagnation. Whatever the conventional wisdom tells you must be true is almost certainly... MORE >
Dar es Salaam, TANZANIA-What would the wealthy nations of the West (and their rising rivals in the East) do if they actually wanted to prevent catastrophic warming? Here in Africa, the obvious answer is that they would find the ways and means to discourage deforestation-the ruinous practice of clear-cutting for timber, charcoal and arable land that accounts for at least 20 percent of the atmospheric carbon burden. Save the trees, and you might just... MORE >
If the right-wing chorus insists that the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is "Obama's Katrina," then let us hope the president will make the most of that slogan. The comparison between the utter failure of the Bush administration and the missteps and errors of the Obama White House is fundamentally false. Yet there is nevertheless a crucial parallel to be drawn as the fifth anniversary of the hurricane... MORE >
Torture is no longer a pressing concern for the American public, if it ever was. The country's attention has understandably turned to lost jobs, costly health care and spilled oil. Most Americans probably agree with President Obama that rather than dwell on the secret abuses of the Bush-Cheney regime, we ought to be looking... MORE >
The government of Israel is supposedly run by the Jewish state's toughest and most ardent defenders, but so far they have inflicted worse damage on its security and its future than its enemies ever could. By treating a Gaza-bound aid flotilla as a military threat, killing nine civilians and imprisoning hundreds more, that government achieved the only foreseeable outcome: another episode of international isolation and internal... MORE >
Rand Paul, Tea Party flavor of the month, is said to be avoiding “overexposure.” Senior Republican Party operatives, worried by the Kentucky Senate nominee’s all-too-revealing remarks after his primary victory, have urged him not to grant any interviews for a while. So he flip-flopped on his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, flaked out on a Meet the Press appearance and has scarcely been heard from... MORE >
The more we learn about the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the more we ought to question the basic assumptions that led us here. Like the explosion of the housing bubble that ruptured the world economy, this human and environmental tragedy resulted from a system that encourages reckless profiteering without effective... MORE >
Someday, when Americans have learned to live the true meaning of our creed, a Supreme Court nomination of a woman, a Latino, an African-American or any other variety of human being—including a gay man or woman—will provoke no comment or concern. Until then, we should applaud every step toward that future. The latest is President Barack Obama’s choice of Elena Kagan to become the third female justice among the nine justices on the nation’s... MORE >
