So levelheaded and full of good sense, it’s almost certain to be ignored.
Brookings Institution fellow and Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Wittes (Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, 2006, etc.) argues for a new legal framework for combating the terror war.
According to the current administration, from early on the fight against international jihadist terrorism was “a new kind of war” against “a different type of enemy” requiring military force, criminal and civilian law enforcement and covert actions, touching everything from immigration to banking to biomedical research and involving foreign police and intelligence agencies. Notwithstanding this early understanding, the Bush administration has chosen, instead, to manage the war almost purely as a military matter, relying on the president’s power as commander in chief to authorize any number of dubious practices pertaining to detention, surveillance, interrogation, transfer and trial of terrorist suspects. Outraged liberals decry the assault on civil liberties; conservatives marvel at their tender solicitude toward fanatics trying to murder us. Similarly, Wittes’s premise that the war on terror is real and requires vigorous prosecution will dismay congenital critics of the president, just as his call to curb executive authority will unsettle Bush supporters. Unsurprised that this or any president would push the envelope of executive authority in the aftermath of 9/11, Wittes persuasively argues that as a long-term strategy such a power grab is politically doomed. Nor can we safely rely on the Supreme Court’s piecemeal review of the president’s overreaching, placing military and security matters in the hands of the judiciary, the least qualified branch to deal with such issues. In an argument of paramount interest to specialists and in prose comprehensible for all (best illustrated by his discussion of the detainees at Guantánamo), Wittes insists that it is past time for Congress to take up its law-making responsibilities, to put an end to the predictable, largely unproductive confrontations between the executive and judiciary on a matter so vital to the country’s welfare.
So levelheaded and full of good sense, it’s almost certain to be ignored.Pub Date: June 23, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59420-179-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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