John Nichols

Pushing Democrats in an Antiwar Direction

John Nichols — 2006-09-14T06:50:00Z

There are plenty of anti-war Democrats running in today's primary elections in states across the country. There are even a few anti-war Republicans — most notably Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee. But few have done a better job than John Sarbanes, a frontrunner for an open U.S. House seat representing Maryland's 3rd District, of articulating the position that the opposition party should be taking with regard to George Bush's war. (...)

Dogs of War, Unloosed

John Nichols — 2006-05-10T18:03:00Z

John Nichols writes that the founders of the American Republic sought to "chain the dogs of war" by giving civilians control over the military. Bush's appointment of Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA is a radical assault on one of our most fundamental safeguards of freedom and peace.

President Bush's nomination of Air Force General Michael V. Hayden to direct the Central Intelligence Agency has opened a debate over whether the most fundamental principles of the American Republic remain will remain in place. (...)

What DeLay Left Behind

John Nichols — 2006-04-06T21:20:00Z

Tom DeLay is quitting a re-election race he could not win and soon will exit the House he held in a hammerlock for the better part of a decade because, he says, "It was obvious to me that this election had become a referendum on me." But if there is to be any real repair of the democracy that DeLay so damaged, November's competition for control of the House still must be that referendum on DeLay—or, more precisely, on the "DeLayism" that continues to characterize this Congress. (...)

[April 24, 2006 issue]

- / Nation

Raising the Issue of Impeachment

John Nichols — 2005-12-21T04:00:00Z

As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.

U.S. Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment. (...)

Bush's War on the Press

John Nichols, Robert McChesney — 2005-11-19T04:10:00Z

In his speech to last spring's National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis, Bill Moyers accused the Bush Administration not merely of attacking his highly regarded PBS program NOW but of declaring war on journalism itself. "We're seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age-old ambition of power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable," explained Moyers. With the November resignation of Moyers's nemesis, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board chair Ken Tomlinson, amid charges of personal and political wrongdoing and a host of other recent developments, it becomes increasingly clear that this White House is doing battle with the journalistic underpinnings of democracy. (...)

[December 5, 2005 issue]

- / Nation

How to Oppose a War

John Nichols — 2005-07-14T03:00:00Z

Contemporary politicians who are struggling to determine when the time will be right to start talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq would do well to borrow a page from former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, D-Wisconsin.

In the spring of 1964, when only about 16,500 U.S. troops were present in the country as "advisers," and when no one had heard of the Gulf of Tonkin, Nelson was asked by a television reporter to discuss the U.S. presence in southeast Asia. Nelson responded by suggesting that President Lyndon Johnson should reconsider the decision to commit troops to the region, arguing that the time had come to "set some timetable for withdrawal from the situation." (...)

- / Nation

How to Fight Terrorism

John Nichols — 2005-07-08T03:20:00Z

President Bush unwittingly provided an appropriate response to the gruesome terrorist attacks on London.

Highlighting the "vivid" contrast between the Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles, Scotland — where the world's most powerful leaders have been forced by grassroots pressure to address issues of global poverty and climate change — and the carnage in London after coordinated bomb blasts killed dozens of commuters Thursday morning, Bush said, "On the one hand, we got people here who are working to alleviate poverty and to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS and that are working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who've got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks." (...)

[The Online Beat]

- / Nation

Court Fight: It's More Than Left-v-Right

John Nichols — 2005-07-02T04:43:37Z

"A nation's success or failure in achieving democracy is judged in part by how well it responds to those at the bottom and the margins of the social order... The very problems that democratic change brings — social tension, heightened expectations, political unrest — are also strengths. Discord is a sign of progress afoot; unease is an indication that a society has let go of what it knows and is working out something better and new."

Those are not the thoughts of a great civil rights leader, nor of a prominent progressive reformer.

They are the words of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing" vote on the U.S. Supreme Court, who on Friday announced that she is stepping down. (...)

- / CommonDreams.org

Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington

John Nichols — 2005-05-19T09:10:28Z

Norm Coleman is a fool.

Not an ideological nut case, not a partisan whack, not even a useful idiot — just a plain old-fashioned, drool-on-his-tie fool.

The Minnesota Republican senator who took Paul Wellstone's seat after one of the most disreputable campaigns in American political history has been trying over the past year to make a name for himself by blowing the controversy surrounding the United Nations Oil for Food program into something more than the chronicle of corporate abuse that it is. The US media, which thrives on official sound bites, was more than willing to lend credence to Coleman's overblown claims about wrongdoing in the UN program set up in 1996 to permit Iraq — which was then under strict international sanctions — to buy food, medicine and humanitarian supplies with the revenues from regulated oil sales. Even as Coleman's claims became more and more fantastic, he faced few challenges from the cowering Democrats in Congress.

But when Coleman started slandering foreign politicians, he exposed the dramatic vulnerability of his claims that the supposed scandal was much more than a blatant example of US corporations taking advantage of their powerful connections in Washington to undermine official US policy, harm the national interest and profit off the suffering of the poor. (...)

- / Nation

FCC: It Could Get Worse

John Nichols, Robert McChesney — 2005-02-05T02:16:00Z

from the February 21, 2005 issue of The Nation.

On the long list of resignations of Cabinet members, agency heads and political appointees that has accompanied the launch of the second Bush term, no member of the Administration's team left under quite so dark a cloud as Michael Powell. The decision of the chair of the Federal Communications Commission to step down was met with near-universal sighs of relief—from the citizen activists and members of Congress who had battled his ham-handed efforts to allow Big Media to get even bigger, of course; but also from industry insiders who had come to see the hapless Powell as an inept champion. It was a measure of how thoroughly Powell had botched his primary mission—eliminating barriers to media consolidation and monopoly—that within days of the announcement of his impending departure, the Justice Department decided not to appeal the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit's ruling that struck down FCC rule changes that would have unleashed a new wave of conglomeration at the local and national levels. (...)

- / Nation, CommonDreams.org

Edwards Attacks Cheney On Halliburton Dealings in Iran, Bribing Foreign Officials and No-Bid Contract in Iraq

John Nichols — 2004-10-07T01:18:00Z

At the Vice Presidential debate, John Edwards dropped what pundits are calling the "H-Bomb" on Dick Cheney - Halliburton. We speak with John Nichols of The Nation magazine and author of Dick: The Man Who Is President about Halliburton's record while Cheney was its CEO and beyond.

A Look at How Cheney Opposed Head Start, MLK Day, and the Release of Mandela

John Nichols — 2004-10-07T01:16:00Z

John Edwards blasted Dick Cheney's voting record as a congressman where he voted against the release of Nelson Mandela, instituting a holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., Head Start and more. We speak with John Nichols of The Nation magazine and author of Dick: The Man Who Is President.

Ominous Pattern

John Nichols — 2004-09-24T04:24:00Z

John Kerry should be reaping votes in the Upper Midwest as easily as a farmer harvesting a bumper crop on the best day of Indian Summer. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa rejected George W. Bush's candidacy in 2000, just as they have every GOP presidential contender since 1988. Most of the complaints about the Bush Administration that are heard across the United States go double for the trio of battleground states that may very well determine whether Kerry or Bush prevails on November 2. (...) [from the October 11, 2004 issue]

- / Nation

Dick Cheney Was "At The Core Of Some Of The Darkest Activities In This Country Over The Last Four Years"

Amy Goodman, John Nichols, Pratap Chatterjee — 2004-09-03T04:23:00Z

Vice President Dick Cheney accepted his party's nomination to run for a second term yesterday. We take a look at the Vice President's history with journalists Pratap Chatterjee of Corpwatch and John Nichols of The Nation, author of Dick the Man Who is President.

- / Democracy Now!

The Other Convention: Scrubbed Speeches, Excluded Voices and the Crackdown on 'Peace Delegates'

John Nichols — 2004-07-30T04:51:23Z

The issue of who speaks at the Democratic National Convention and what they can and cannot say is a highly politicized one. We asked John Nichols of The Nation magazine how this process works.