Richard Neustadt, who died in 2003, was the most influential scholar of the American Presidency. He was a founder of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an adviser to Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and, in his book “Presidential Power” (1960), he wrote the most frequently quoted line in Presidential studies: “The power of the presidency is the power to persuade.” On August 31st of last year, President Barack Obama prepared to exercise that power. Frustrated with the slow recovery of the economy, he wanted to throw the weight of his office behind a major new stimulus package, the American Jobs Act. To this end, the White House announced that the President would deliver a televised speech to a joint ... Continue reading →
– File Photo PESHAWAR: A suspected US drone fired two missiles that killed 10 alleged militants in northwest Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The two officials said Thursday’s attack took place on a militant hideout in Khassokhel village near Mir Ali in North Waziristan. It was the second such attack in 24 hours in the region. The officials said most of those killed were Uzbek insurgents. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media. Drone strikes have become an increasingly contentious issue between the US and Pakistan. Pakistan’s Parliament recently demanded the US end all drone strikes on its territory. The US has shown no intention of stopping the covert CIA program. Like ... Continue reading →
Alex Pareene's annual Hack List is so popular -- and useful -- we thought we should spread it out over the year. This column is a regular feature taking a deeper look at our media's most pernicious hacks, which we'll rank in order at year's end. Tim Russert was not the unalloyed saint of tough journalism that his celebrators describe in posthumous tributes, but he was at least a classic American success story, of the sort that we still enjoy pretending is common: Blue-collar kid from Rust Belt town becomes enormously successful thanks largely to brains and hard work. The story of Luke Russert, alas, is a much more common one in American life: No-account kid of successful person has more success thrust upon him. ... Continue reading →
In 2006, The New York Times‘ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize for their December, 2005 article revealing that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on the electronic communications of Americans without the warrants required by the FISA law (headline: “Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law”). Even though multiple federal judges eventually ruled the program illegal, that scandal generated no accountability of any kind for two reasons: (1) federal courts ultimately accepted the arguments of the Bush and Obama DOJs that the legality of Bush’s domestic spying program should not be judicially reviewed; and (2) the Democratic-led Congress, in 2008, enacted the Bush-designed FISA Amendments Act, which not only retroactively immunized the nation’s telecom giants for their illegal participation in that spying program ... Continue reading →
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