The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program: Latest Articles

In an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August, President Obama made an impassioned case for the American military effort in Afghanistan. "If left unchecked," Obama said, "the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." Indeed, he went so far as to call the war in Afghanistan a "war of necessity," a term one normally reserves for repelling a foreign invasion or foiling an imminent attack. One of the vitally important points the… more

I have a confession: I love my huge television. A couple of years ago, thanks to a very large Amazon.com gift certificate and a very poor grasp of measurements, I adopted a 50-inch plasma. It utterly dominated my tiny living room until I finally moved, yet even then I loved it. The vivid colors and enormous crystal-clear picture were a worthy substitute for the cinema. Video games were even better -- and "Blade Runner" on Blu-ray was sublime. It ended up being a very costly purchase,… more

"Those who can remember the past," Arthur Schlesinger once wrote, turning George Santayana on his head, "are condemned to repeat it." Maybe someone should staple that to the computers at The New York Times.

If you've spent time in progressive circles these last nine months, you've certainly heard the "make me do it" story. The details bounce around, even the name of the president who allegedly said it (sometimes it's Johnson, most often it's Roosevelt), but the basic tale is this: the president is meeting in the Oval Office with an activist, a union president or a civil rights leader pushing a progressive cause. At the end of the meeting the president says, "OK, you've convinced me. Now go out and… more

Bobby Jindal, the 38-year-old Indian-American governor of Louisiana, and a rising star in Republican circles, did a brave thing on Monday morning: He took to the op-ed page of The Washington Post to urge his fellow GOPers to "join the battle of ideas" on health care. That is, Republicans should put forward their own health care plan. And to get that process rolling, he put forth ten ideas of his own.