Columns

"...with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the "Tea Party" in the lead, this claim of being the "real American patriots" facing down opponents who threaten the country is full blown. They make much of collective displays of patriotism, casting themselves as latter day revolutionaries who are saving the Republic. In their minds, it is not that they "also" love America and want to defend its Constitution - rather it is "only" they who love America and they are fighting to "take our country back" - with the implication being that it was in "alien hands" not just an opposing party."

"I am equally frustrated by those, on both the right and the left, who have callously reduced the matter of immigration to a "wedge issue" to be exploited for political gain. Immigration is far more than that. It is our American story. We should never forget that most of our families begin with a Habib or a Yousef. It is their stories that make us great. And there are more stories just like theirs that are being written by new immigrants every day. We owe our past and our future more than the current state of our debate. Let us hope that in the New Year we can find the wisdom to do justice to our legacy."

"As for the factions of "exiles", although in some ways I sympathize with them and respect the intensity of their feelings, the firestorm of name-calling and misrepresentation they created over our desire to convene a meeting to support Lebanon, makes me believe we were right to exclude them in the first place. They act more like a symptom of Lebanon's problems than agents who can provide a solution to the country's divisions."

"It is important to also remember that indictments, when they are issued, are just that, indictments - not judgments or verdicts. The sealed work of the investigators will go to a pre-trial judge who will then take between six to eight weeks to review the findings and then make a determination as to whether or not they create sufficient grounds to merit prosecution. Only if the judge agrees to proceed will arrest warrants be issued. Note that it is only at this point that the names of those to be indicted may become official and public."

"...to use these concerns to construct a notion that any or all of them nullify concern with the plight of the Palestinians or the fate of Jerusalem is sheer fantasy. As our polling has consistently demonstrated, Palestine is not merely an issue, it is an existential concern that not only unites Arabs, it defines their sense of common history and their deepest feelings of betrayal by and their vulnerability in the face of Western machinations. In a real sense, the plight of Palestinians is to the Arabs, what the Holocaust is to Jews world-wide. To ignore this reality is to invite disaster."

"Evidence of the Obama administration’s “moral collapse” is profuse; the pattern is clear, the consequences already terrible. During the weeks and months ahead, progressives will need to engage in fresh strategic discussions. Public candor may be insufficient, but it is necessary."

So is the logic here that Israel will go through this "agonizing" internal debate (sweetened with incentives) to agree to stop doing what they should not have been doing all along, and then put the ball in the Palestinian court, forcing them to accept what they were never a party to in the first place, or appear to be the "spoilers"?

"By its own account, the U.S. government has been at war for more than nine years now and there’s no end in sight. Like the Pentagon, the State Department is serving the overall priorities of the warfare state. The nation’s military and diplomacy are moving parts of the same vast war machinery....Such a contraption requires a muscular bodyguard of partial truths, deceptions and outright lies. With the USA’s ongoing war efforts at full throttle, the contradictions between public rationales and hidden goals -- or between lofty rhetoric and grisly human consequences -- cannot stand the light of day."