Yearly Archives 2006

We've posted a collection of current and archival materials about civil liberties since 9/11, including a growing library of audio accounts from ACLU staff and leaders and a really interesting feature from ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program about all the things the administration could have done that it has not done to protect America. (We often scramble to get web features like this live in time, but in this case the team did a huge amount of work to get the bulk of it up early, including a lot of late-hour design work and audio production.)

Normally I like the way pop culture suffuses institutional culture, like naming the first Space Shuttle "Enterprise" or making Paul McCartney a knight. But for some reason I get sick to my stomach listening to Ambassador to Israel Richard H. Jones talking about the Mideast conflict on CNN, saying how he's "seen this movie before" because he was ambassador to Lebanon in the mid-90s. Then Soledad O'Brien only made it more annoying when she said that finding a solution was, "of course, the sixty-four thousand dollar question." Great. So now it's not even a movie. It's a game show. And by the way, wouldn't the former ambassador to Lebanon want to show a little more respect for that country's slain civilians, rather than focusing exclusively on Hizbollah when asked where the fault for all this lies? As they spoke, the ticker at the bottom of the screen also mentioned that…

Journalist - and new-journo dramatist - Joe Klein speculates about how the influence and agenda of Iran plays into the current conflagration: So let's speculate that there's a difference of opinion between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei about how to proceed on nuclear negotiations with the West. Let's say Ahmadinejad doesn't want to negotiate. Let's say he wants to send a message to the West, to the Israelis and also to Khamenei: I'm not a powerless figurehead like my predecessor, Mohammed Khatami. My friends in the Revolutionary Guards give me veto power over any deal. It would not be difficult for Ahmadinejad to send the message, via the Guards, to both Hizballah and the military wing of Hamas, which is based in Damascus and funded in part by Iran: Let's rile up the Israelis and start a crisis. Let's change the subject from the Iranian nuclear negotiations. At the very least, let's…

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