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Your Questions for Alito

As confirmation hearings unfold before the Senate Judiciary committee, readers of TheNation.com–and at least one high-profile magazine editor–posed their own questions about Samuel Alito’s judicial philosophy, personal beliefs and political ideology.

The Nation

Are Voters Ready to Dump Lieberman?

Evidence is mounting that Connecticut Democrats are dismayed by Senator Joseph Lieberman’s support of President Bush and the Iraq War, giving impetus to assertions that voters are ready to dump him.

Emily Biuso

Credibility Gap

A significant credibility gap opened between Samuel Alito’s radical judicial record and his self-portrayal as an open-minded jurist before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his second day of testimony. Senators have reason to scrutinize a recent peer evaluation of Alito’s rulings by Yale Law School, which locates him somewhere to the ideological right of Antonin Scalia.

Bruce Shapiro

Pacifying Iraq: Insurgent Scenarios

In informal but politically credible ways, factions of Iraq’s armed national resistance are developing scenarios for an honorable withdrawal of US troops and a shared set of demands that could lead to peace.

Tom Hayden

Biography as Destiny

On his first day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Samuel Alito was purely political, focusing on his blue-collar roots and the accomplishments of his immigrant family. But Democratic Senators focused on his judicial record on abortion, voting rights and conflicts of interest.

Bruce Shapiro

The Limits of Power: Questions for Alito

Revelations of the Bush Administration’s domestic spying program have sharply shifted the focus of Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings from domestic and social issues to executive privilege during times of war. Here’s a list of questions Alito should be asked to fully elicit his views on the scope and limits of presidential power.

Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

The Geopolitics of Natural Gas

Natural gas is rapidly emerging as the next big prize for consumer countries like the US and China. In the twenty-first century, alliances and hostilities between economic powerhouses and volatile nations will be carved by the pipes that will someday carry this environmentally safer resource.

Michael T. Klare

A ‘Top Ten’ List of Bold Ideas

To take back the nation in the post-Bush era, start thinking now about some bold but plausible progressive reforms, from universal health insurance to free daycare and a shorter work week.

Gar Alperovitz and Thad Williamson

Evo’s Challenge in Bolivia

Many Bolivians have faith in Evo Morales, the former coca farmer who became the first indigenous president in the country’s history last month. But will Morales be able to keep his promises to nationalize the energy industry and protect indigenous culture and the livelihood of farmers?

Daphne Eviatar

Do the Crime, Do No Time

There ought to be a law about bribery in America, but there isn’t–not a real one. Bribery is so central to our political culture that it’s virtually impossible that any politician ensnared in the Abramoff scandal will actually be convicted of the corruption that makes Washington work.

Nicholas von Hoffman

Is Fear the Best Way to Fight AIDS?

Thanks to the fear tactics advocated by the Bush Administration and abetted by many health activists, gay and bisexual men have been engaged in a one-sided conversation about safe sex–all death and no life. Isn’t a sex-positive approach more realistic?

Kai Wright

In Fact…

SMOKING OUT FLAME

The Editors

Jack Gordon

Jack Gordon, “the unabashedly liberal conscience of Florida’s State Senate,” was chosen majority leader at a time when his politics should have made him an anathema. His fight against discrimination and his involvement in state politics helped many powerless Floridians.

Molly Ivins

Harry Magdoff

The late socialist economist Harry Magdoff read Marx at fifteen and never looked back. A self-educated co-editor of the Monthly Review, he not only fought for a just and humane world; he embodied his politics in the way he conducted his life.

The Nation

Hunger Is Not a Place

It’s not true that only the rich can help the poor. We must work to empower nations like Bangladesh that are addressing the problem of hunger by creating networks of schools, health training and micro-loans.

Frances Moore Lappé

Of Queers and Kong

From Brokeback Mountain’s closeted cowboys to King Kong’s embrace of Anne Darrow, Hollywood has queered cherished icons of masculinity. But the two films paint a bleak picture: Love that falls outside the norm must struggle to be something more than self-destructive.

Richard Goldstein

Ruling Class Warriors

House Republicans rammed through a budget bill in December that cuts $40 billion from domestic programs. Is there anyone of conscience in the Senate to defeat this?

Eyal Press

The Case Against Alito

Samuel Alito would swing the Supreme Court to a right-wing authoritarianism that is out of step with the public and the Constitution.

The Editors

Top News Stories of 2006

Tony Auth

Shame of the Once-Young Republicans

What irony that Jack Abramoff and other once-young Republicans, who hectored their elders about defending the nation’s taxpayers and security forces, should now be accused of deeply betraying both.

Robert Scheer

‘Fool Me Once…’

The willingness of our most powerful media companies to defer to pressure from the White House is deeply disconcerting. In the name of national security, the Bush team repeatedly demonstrates its contempt for the media and for normative standards of truth.

Eric Alterman

Pandora’s Box

A deep planetary insecurity has fostered a rush to build boundaries around ourselves–psychic green zones–no matter how irrational, separating white from black or brown, Christian from Muslim, European from Arab.

Patricia J. Williams

The President’s Measured Response to Criticism of His Secret Domestic Spying Operation

Since I am Commander in Chief,
My powers to spy or debrief
Are limitless. That’s my belief.
So go somewhere else with your beef.

Calvin Trillin

Harry Magdoff

The late socialist economist Harry Magdoff read Marx at fifteen and never looked back. A self-educated co-editor of the Monthly Review, he not only fought for a just and humane world; he embodied his politics in the way he conducted his life.

The Nation

Of Queers and Kong

From Brokeback Mountain’s closeted cowboys to King Kong’s embrace of Anne Darrow, Hollywood has queered cherished icons of masculinity. But the two films paint a bleak picture: Love that falls outside the norm must struggle to be something more than self-destructive.

Richard Goldstein

What You Do

when nobody’s looking
in the black sites what you do
when nobody knows you
are in there what you do

Maxine Kumin

La Vie de Bohème

Drawing from the New York counterculture in which he immersed himself, Ted Berrigan’s sonnets and other poems sing beautifully about being broken and graceful and tough.

John Palattella

Dr. Fun

Kenneth Koch was one of the merrier in the bunch known as the New York School of poets. But he was more than just a poet of humor. He sought the essential nature of human existence, and displayed his infectious awe of the universe in enchanting verse.

Melanie Rehak

Live Flesh

In no other body of work is the sexuality of human flesh explored as truthfully as in the transgressive, erotically charged images created by Egon Schiele.

Arthur C. Danto

Letters

INDEX FOR OUR TIMES

Northampton, Mass.

Doug Ireland and Our Readers