A record-low one in four U.S. teenagers will land a summer job in the coming months as a result of a still-poor job market and lost federal funding, according to a report issued on Monday.--------------------------------------------
As a consequence, urban studies experts said cities like Chicago -- where summer unemployment among African-Americans aged 16 to 19 years approaches 90 percent -- could experience a rise in street violence.
Officials say CIA interrogators in secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.The ironies of this story are growing deeper and deeper by the hour.
Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.
“Obama may be re-elected because George Bush had the good sense not to listen to Obama.”Update:
Yes, this is going to help Mr. Obama — to some degree or another — in November 2012. And yes, it’s also going to make Mr. Obama look much more formidable in the near-term.
But I’m not sure that the magnitude of the bump that Mr. Obama might get in the Gallup tracking poll is going to be especially predictive of how much the residue of this news might produce for him 19 months from now....I tend to agree with Silver, because he confirms my own views. (Funny how that works.)
But, the 2012 election was probably not going to revolve around national security. Instead, the Republican nominee was probably going to attempt to make the campaign about the size of government and the future of the welfare state: how to deal with entitlement programs in the face of an increasing national debt.
This news may not change the focal point of the campaign. And it may not cause Americans to forget about the direction of the economy, which they remain largely unhappy about.
The biggest mistake that Republican candidates could make would be to be intimated by the approval ratings of a president who, while not easy to defeat, may still be quite vulnerable in November 2012.
The killing of Osama bin Laden is one of those events which, especially in the immediate aftermath, is not susceptible to reasoned discussion. It's already a Litmus Test event: all Decent People -- by definition -- express unadulterated ecstacy at his death, and all Good Americans chant "USA! USA!" in a celebration of this proof of our national greatness and Goodness (and that of our President). Nothing that deviates from that emotional script will be heard, other than by those on the lookout for heretics to hold up and punish.You can guess the rest.
Kathleen McCaffrey, from Fair Lawn, New Jersey, is a rising senior at Cornell University with a major in philosophy and history. She is a staff writer and campus editor of The Cornell Review and is the editor and founder of www.ThePoliticizer.com, an online magazine of opinion articles from students across the country. Last summer she interned at America’s Future Foundation through the Koch Summer Fellow program. She will work in London this summer, reporting to Brian Carney, editorial page editor, WSJE.The Bartley Fellowships are a big deal, and the application process is extraordinarily competitive. Here is the description from the WSJ website:
Throughout his 30 years as The Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page Editor, Bob Bartley inspired principled and original thinking that changed and shaped the society in which we all live. He also devoted attention to teaching and motivating talented young people, many of whom have gone on to careers in journalism at the Journal and elsewhere. The Bartley fellowships are consistent with that legacy.
Bob Bartley achieved many honors during his long tenure here including a Pulitzer Prize and, shortly before his death in December 2003, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In awarding that medal, President Bush cited Bob as "one of the most influential journalists in American history." The Robert L. Bartley fellowships will help to perpetuate not just Bob's memory but above all the principles and priorities to which he devoted his distinguished career.With Kathleen having Koch and Wall Street Journal (Murdoch) fellowships, Kathleen now has an impeccable pedigree. It's only a matter of time until the most expensive proofreader in America starts checking her work.
Perhaps the most striking element, culturally speaking, of last night's White House Correspondents Dinner was President Obama's introductory video, crafted in the spirit of South Park and Team America World Police and the Colbert Report in what you could interpret either as a ironic, subversive send-up of American patriotism or as a kind of post-ironic homage.
The humor is intensely generational: If you didn't grow up with those references, the montage of American flags, monster truck rallies, and eagles, all to the beat of Rick Derringer's "Real American," formerly Hulk Hogan's WWF theme song, isn't funny, and actually doesn't make much sense. If you did, it it's effective partly because it edges so close to real political risk: The presidency seems an odd vehicle, even at a roast, for mocking patriotism. But as with South Park, the video -- assembled by young White House speechwriters -- leaves the interpretation up to the viewer: Some viewers can sneer at over-the-top patriotism, and marvel at White House subversion; but maybe it's just joyful, hyperbolic patriotism.No, this presidency does not seem an odd vehicle, even at a roast, for mocking patriotism. At least no more so than in a private fundraiser in San Francisco, or at the U.N., or in Cairo, or in Europe.
