Featured Articles — June 7, 2009

June 7, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Victory In Iraq By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
How we got here is a matter for history. But the democratic ideal is still within reach.

The context shows that Judge Sotomayor meant what she said. By Jennifer Rubin, The Weekly Standard
Not since Rose Mary Woods made “18  ” famous has a number so absorbed the attention of the media and political establishment. But with President Barack Obama’s nomination of Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter, Washington has become transfixed by “32″–the number of words in a startling passage from the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture that Sotomayor delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 2001 and published the following spring in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.

Have We Got a Deal For You at GM By George Will, Boston Herald
“I,” said the president, who is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun, “want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector.” He said that in March, when the government already owned 80 percent of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The trouble with Obama’s Cairo speech. By James Kirchick, The New Republic
Even if you didn’t like the president’s speech, there were certainly elements to applaud. He did not shy away from defending the American-led mission in Afghanistan. His moving commentary about the Holocaust was absolutely necessary in a part of the world where so many people deny its existence. Those were the good parts. Unfortunately, these noble sentiments were accompanied by a series of worrisome ones.

The power of humility By Zvi Bar’el, Ha’aretz
Is there meaning and power to Barack Obama’s address without President Obama? Is this solely Obama’s text or is it America’s new text, whoever the president might be? The answer is twofold.

Iran’s Election: Rallies Reveal a Stark Contrast By Nahid Siamdoust, Time
Tehran’s main squares and streets have been crowded until the wee hours over this past week, as supporters of the upcoming election’s two leading contestants roam the streets on foot and in cars, chanting, honking their horns, waving posters.

After Cairo, It’s Clinton Time By Thomas Friedman, The New York Times
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry after reading the reactions of analysts and officials in the Middle East to President Obama’s Cairo speech. “It’s not what he says, but what he does,” many said. No, ladies and gentlemen of the Middle East, it is what he says and what you do and what we do. We must help, but we can’t want democracy or peace more than you do.

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