It was about a pattern of acts by a president that threatened the constitution, the law, and the Bill of Rights. Nothing happening now comes close to that.
more.
The contest between liberty and security has been…fought on the public stage by every President from George Washington to Barack Obama. Each generation, from those facing rebellion in the 1860s to those pushing back against government intrusions a century later, has debated where to strike a balance. But in the…world of 21st century law enforcement, where terrorist threats can hide behind our most cherished freedoms, the battle sometimes takes place in government documents so obscure that they escape public notice.
more.
…The fact that Barack Obama failed to win legislation to place further curbs on the purchase of guns—even after the horror of Newtown, Connecticut—has made people who ought to know better decide that he’s not an “arm-twister.” Ever since Obama took office, others have been certain about how he should handle the job and that he wasn’t doing it right. Yet if the health care law is allowed to work, despite continuing Republican efforts to try to make sure that it doesn’t, and if we take into account some other victories—the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the stimulus that was as large as the political market would bear, the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, the largest since the New Deal if Congress will let it be implemented—his presidency could go down as a time of historic achievement. Nevertheless, when an insufficient number of senators was available to kill a hypothetical filibuster of the gun bill—a watered-down measure to expand background checks for gun sales (while opening gaping loopholes)—suddenly the word went out that the president is hopeless as an arm-twister; the assumption of course was that being a good arm-twister was critical for a successful presidency. Wait a minute.
more.
![Superficially, the America of [President] McKinley’s time—a nation of 76 million people dominated by an Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite, in which only a handful of nonwhites and women were even permitted to vote—has little in common with the America of Barack Obama. But the nativist paranoia about alien ideologies and alien religions remains strikingly familiar, as does the quest for “enemy combatants” behind every door and under every sofa. If you ask me, the real enemy combatants, now as in 1901, are right here at home, ready and willing to surrender our remaining rights and freedoms in the name of rooting out the supposedly imported virus of evil.
more.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/7e0e940674049a77a19f5a1bfcfd6ef9/tumblr_mlxtixL30F1qcwnv4o1_500.jpg)
Superficially, the America of [President] McKinley’s time—a nation of 76 million people dominated by an Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite, in which only a handful of nonwhites and women were even permitted to vote—has little in common with the America of Barack Obama. But the nativist paranoia about alien ideologies and alien religions remains strikingly familiar, as does the quest for “enemy combatants” behind every door and under every sofa. If you ask me, the real enemy combatants, now as in 1901, are right here at home, ready and willing to surrender our remaining rights and freedoms in the name of rooting out the supposedly imported virus of evil.
more.
Program from this morning’s dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
So many Presidents on one page AND “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
[look of the hour]
There was George Bush himself, on Thursday…at the dedication of the Presidential library whose archives will hold evidence of the disaster of his war. It is important to…wonder which Iraqi ghost we are confronting. We have heard about false intelligence before, and, rightly, want to know why it’s different this time. But there is also the question of how to deal with chemical weapons if you do know that they’re there. If, in the first few days in Iraq, we had secured a cache of sarin, would we now be content with the images from Fallujah, with the bungling of the occupation, with the terrible human price that ordinary Iraqis paid? The falsity of the opening adds a sordid layer to it all—but war, even scrubbed of lies, isn’t pretty. Of course, unlike in Iraq, Syria is already engaged in an increasingly unhinged civil war, and, in a basic, human, way, we are…keen to do something. But what?
more.
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art: A Free Syrian Army fighter practiced using a Dragunov semiautomatic sniper rifle during training exercises in the countryside outside of Homs in June 2012
Dallas, Texas today, where they will join former presidents in inaugurating the presidential library and museum of George W. Bush…
more.
While it is true that there is no such thing as a Carter Democrat, historians are starting to see our 39th president as a flawed, yet visionary leader.
more.
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art: by Andy Warhol
Shonda Rhimes’s show is made under…ratings pressure, constant threat of cancellation, a ravenous tweeting audience. These forces wreck other network dramas, and Rhimes’s previous shows have flown off the rails, but “Scandal” has only got stronger. It’s become more opera than soap opera…Like much genre fiction, “Scandal” uses its freedom to indulge in crazy what-ifs: What if everyone but the President knew that the election was fixed? What if the President tried to divorce his pregnant wife? What if—well…It’s a different kind of binge watch.
“The election of the country’s first black president had the ironic upshot of opening the door for old-fashioned racism to influence partisan preferences after it was long thought to be a spent force in American politics,” Michael Tesler writes. He adds that this “enhanced polarization of white partisanship” may “leave a lasting mark on American politics that endures after he leaves office.”
more.
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art: Illustration by Edel Rodriguez
Bill Cosby vintage varsity style.
Tyra for Yves Saint Laurent, s/s 1995
![[look of the hour]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/fa861fb90ad3bf6cbeb75d3ec9079fd9/tumblr_mn0cgtmanS1qcwnv4o1_500.jpg)
![ourpresidents:
Program from this morning’s dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
So many Presidents on one page AND “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
[look of the hour]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/7e74e4595cd7362ced5fef8203f496dd/tumblr_mltpqhj8FL1qjih96o1_500.jpg)
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