Mark Crispin Miller

What is your Department? It has to be Prevarication going back to Age of Pericles!!!!! You didn't go to Yale with your hero Clinton did you or maybe Harvard with Gore????
--from ERKTHE@aol.com, 6/13/01

I didn't go to Yale with Clinton--who is not my hero--OR with Bush, and I didn't go to Harvard with Gore OR Bush. I went to Northwestern.
Do you have a point to make, or a serious question to ask? Or would you rather just hurl insults? Is that your idea of rational debate?
--from mcm7@pop.nyu.edu, 6/13/01

Although it got much riskier on 9/11, the latter course of study was already pretty harrowing; I'd taken it (and without knowing it) when, in June, I started to promote The Bush Dyslexicon--a dark assessment of George W. Bush, and an indictment of the U.S. major media, based on meticulous analysis both of Bush's off-the-cuff remarks and of their treatment by the stalwarts of the media. Because the book got few reviews (no big surprise), I tried to do as Richard Nixon did in 1952: I "took my case directly to the people"--not, of course, through truculent prime-time asides about my dog, but by doing as much talk radio as possible, to tell the audience what, by studying his utterances, I had discovered deep in the heart of W, and at the top of our defunct democracy.

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by Anne-Marie Slaughter

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - President George W. Bush has signed an executive order allowing accused terrorists to be tried by military commissions instead of in federal court. Trials by military commission will prove disastrous - to the war against terrorism, to the U.S. Constitution and to the rule of law.

The Bush administration favors such trials because they will allow sensitive evidence to be presented in secret. The rules governing the conduct of military commissions would be drawn up by the Pentagon, without regard to the safeguards and guarantees provided by the constitution.

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The new US ruthlessness may turn out to be a greater threat than the Islamist fanaticism that provoked it
by Madeleine Bunting

Over the past few days, I've been ordered on to a strict diet of my words. A stream of emails arrived from American readers with plenty of advice (get laid, get pregnant, shut your fat legs, shut up) and prognostications for my future (you'll be fired). One told me that I made them feel sick: "untouched by our tragedy, yet [you] feel the right to criticise our country's actions". One asked if "you have a molecule of shame or humility within your entire being?" and promised to pray for me. Another asked: "how stupid do you feel now?... this is one of the best wars ever fought" and another asked: "as the US war on terror becomes increasingly successful, could the world say 'thank you'?".

Thank God for the volume of seawater which puts these kind of nutters on another continent. It's not so much the fine line in misogynistic abuse from US patriots, but the intolerance of debate and diversity of opinion which is really frightening. But the truth is that this kind of emotional intensity has also seeped into the war on this side of the Atlantic - entrenched camps for and against are waging a bitter war of words over the heads of a majority who are worried and confused, but see no alternative to war.

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by Ira Chernus

Watching human rights and human joy return to Afghanistan, it seems hard to criticize the Bush administration's policies. But is the war’s outcome really worth the price?

To most Americans, it may seem like a silly question. The Taliban were so terrible, they say, that whatever it takes to overthrow them is worth it. But does the end, no matter how good, justify the means? Would we have killed a million Afghans to bring down the Taliban? Five million? How many of our own troops would we have sacrificed? Surely there is some limit to the price we would pay. So it always makes sense to ask whether the price is worthwhile.

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by Robert Kuttner

HOUSE AND Senate leaders are now deadlocked between a Republican House stimulus bill that is a shameless tax giveaway to large corporations and a Senate Democratic spending bill that is well intended but too paltry.

The country is facing a serious recession as well as increased national security needs. The safety net is frayed. Joblessness is rising, but unemployment insurance now covers fewer workers with stingier benefits.

Welfare is no longer an entitlement, and many mothers who have played by the new rules and taken jobs are being laid off with no prospect of public assistance. Since health insurance is tied to employment for most Americans, loss of job means loss of health coverage.

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by William Rivers Pitt

"The dead have been awakened—shall I sleep?The world’s at war with tyrants—shall I crouch?The harvest’s ripe—and shall I pause to reap?I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,Its echo in my heart."
- Lord Byron

I spent yesterday climbing to the summit of this bald bulb of a hill called Mt. Monadnock, which rises incongruously from the level plains of southern New Hampshire. The day was bright and clear with little wind, a perfect day for a hike. I reached the top in under two hours and paused to absorb the view. New England lay before me to all points on the compass, brown and prepared for winter. Here and there were lakes and houses. In the distance something burned, sending a column of smoke into the air.

The hard blue November sky was stitched with white lines that crossed each other in every direction, as if a deranged skywriter had decided to paint the air repeatedly with the letter 'A.' It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing: contrails from combat aircraft arriving and departing from various bases across the region. Even here, 4,000 feet above the world, the troubles that consume us hover above, close enough to touch.

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by Salim Muwakkil

Our newly urgent need for collective security has revealed deficiencies in many of our public institutions. The U.S. Postal Service, our woeful system of public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and many other agencies charged with serving public needs are themselves in need of assistance. The FBI has even asked the public for help in tracking down the anthrax terrorists.

Despite the need to better utilize our national resources for this new war on terrorism, we still are squandering them in the old war on drugs.

Last month, agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration raided the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center, a source of marijuana for AIDS patients, cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis sufferers, or any other patient with a doctor's prescription for medicinal marijuana. Californians voted overwhelmingly to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes in 1996.

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by John Buell

I am not surprised that John Ashcroft would seize any real or imagined pretext to inflict draconian damage on civil liberties. Much more astounding has been the almost complete capitulation by Democrats in Congress to his radical agenda. If grass roots activists can’t summon the courage to resist, all Americans may pay a high price for the loss of these liberties.

It has never been more important to distinguish between political rights and personal conveniences. Being required to wait longer at an airport so that luggage can be searched is an inconvenience but not an injustice. All of us are subject to such searches and no one has a right to carry bombs or weapons onto planes. Nonetheless, all of us—regardless of background or ideology-- should have a right to our ideas, our privacy, and our political speech.

Wiretapping has long been allowed under US law, but only under strictly regulated circumstances. Probable cause that a crime had been or was about to be committed had to be shown and the approval of a judge obtained. A few years ago, these requirements were loosened to enable gathering of information regarding foreign terrorist organizations. A secret court was established that could approve such wiretaps without requiring the government to show evidence of criminal conduct.

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