2007 Archive (8 found)
‘The Nine’ Offers Riveting Insider Reading on Supreme Court
September 7, 2007 | San Francisco Chronicle
There was one thing I really wanted to learn in “The Nine,” Jeffrey Toobin’s new book about the Supreme Court, and I came away disappointed: Why did William Rehnquist start wearing those stripes? One day in 1995, the then-chief justice emerged from behind the world’s most imposing curtain and quietly sat down to court with …
A Balanced Look at Deadly Colorado Miners Strike
August 5, 2007 | San Francisco Chronicle
The photograph shows two straight lines of mourners marching over fresh snow, snaking back through the rugged company town toward the mountains. The picture was taken almost 100 years ago, but you can still see the cold: The gray sky moves by hugely overhead, and chimneys blow smoke; the men – they are almost all …
Young, Pregnant, and in Peril
July 8, 2007 | San Francisco Chronicle
The law of abortion frequently hinges on safety valves. For instance, it has long been the law that a state can outlaw late-term abortions so long as it provides certain exceptions, including for the life or health of the mother. The Supreme Court lately called this into question when it upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion …
So-Called Guilded Age a Failure of Government
May 8, 2007 | San Francisco Chronicle
“Thank God, here in America, there are no classes!” So said then-Rep. James Garfield in 1877 while debating a bill to provide $500 loans to the scores of Americans who had gone west in search of manifest destiny and found only blizzards, buzzards and privation. The country was just finding its way out of the …
The Silly, Secret, Momentous Time when Nixon went to China
February 17, 2007 | San Francisco Chronicle
There was a real fear among White House eggheads that President Richard Nixon would get sloshed and ruin his ceremonial toast during a banquet at China’s Great Hall of the People in 1972. One of his assistants discovered on an advance trip that the Chinese liquor mao-tai was potent stuff; he warned in a memorandum …
Prime Green
February 13, 2007 | Christian Science Monitor
If the ’60s were a jungle, then Robert Stone wore camouflage. In his new memoir, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, the celebrated novelist comes across as mild, unobjectionable, and moderate (considering) – a man living in but not always of the era. Perhaps he was so steady because he was a veteran or maybe it …
How the Press Learned to Cover Race
January 9, 2007 | Christian Science Monitor
Mainstream journalism in the US was late to the civil rights story – but powerful when it finally arrived. Much is made these days of media “bias,” but history shows that “balance” has its limits. In 1959 a group of Southern editors, hoping to divert attention from racial violence in their states, badgered the Associated …
Meat Eaters, Chew on This
January 7, 2007 | San Francisco Chronicle
An intellectual history of a food choice shows its ties to political and social radicals, Eastern religious thought and the odd health nut. In “Animal Liberation,” the bible of the modern animal rights movement, philosopher Peter Singer bluntly claims that “[t]he attitudes toward animals of previous generations are no longer convincing because they draw on …