Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:32:05 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Andrew Ferguson :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Andrew+Ferguson istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-al-wishes-abe-said/56457/ Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST In a chapter titled "The Politics of Wealth," Al Gore argues in his new book, "The Assault on Reason," that the ancient threat to democracy posed by rich people run amok has finally been realized under the man who beat him in the 2000 presidential race. Even Lincoln, Mr. Gore says, saw the age of Bush coming in 1864: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/does-the-mitt-fit/49991/ Wed, 7 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST "Oh no, no, no," said the energetic young man when I asked him his name and where he was from. He was working the crowd at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. "Just say I'm a public-spirited person with an important warning." Which is? He raised a bony finger. "Beware Mitt Romney!" And then he was gone, vanished in the labyrinthine exhibition hall filled with booths for the National Tax Limitation Committee, the Leadership Institute — "For Conservatives Who Want... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/schoolchildren-left-behind/49445/ Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST You think you hate your job? Imagine working for the National Assessment of Educational Progress at the U.S. Department of Education, which releases periodic reports on the state of education in America. Another day, another statistic — and not just any statistic but another sad, despair-inducing statistic, the kind that, piled one on top of another, might make you double-check whether you still qualify for that last slot on the roadkill detail at the highway department. Last week the NAEP... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/csi-at-mount-vernon/49004/ Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST James Rees can pinpoint the moment when he knew things weren't going too well, George Washington-wise. Mr. Rees is the director of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the 154-year-old organization charged with preserving Washington's sublimely picturesque estate, 10 miles south of the nation's capital. It was the early 1990s, and Mr. Rees was addressing a group of school kids at a tree-planting ceremony. He thought he would open with a few jokes playing off the familiar Washington myths. "I... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/new-york-pseuds-analyze-bush/48613/ Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST I know, I know: It is a fool's errand to attempt to trace the intellectual genealogy of the people who put out New York magazine, which so rarely offers any intellectual content at all. But the recent feature from the February 5 issue, "Bush on the Couch: Analyzing the President," in which 13 writers subject President Bush to a long-distance psychiatric exam, tempts us to try anyway. Pretending that your political adversary is crazy — rather than merely misguided, mistaken, or misinformed — is... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/revolt-against-academe/48153/ Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST At journalism school I flunked my class in "Trends: How to Identify Them, How to Invent Them." So I'm not qualified to peg what follows as a genuine social or cultural trend. But it's happened in four state legislatures already. And we can always hope. Most recently it's been percolating in Missouri, where Rep. Jane Cunningham introduced a bill that will surely unnerve many of her state's higher education bureaucrats. Ms. Cunningham's bill is aimed straight at the ideological orthodoxy that... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/non-pol-politicians-always-lose/47827/ Thu, 1 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST Barack Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" is well into its fourth month on the bestseller list, and even a professional sourpuss (not that I know any) can see why. "I am new enough on the national political scene," he writes in the book's prologue, "to serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Never mind the mixed metaphor about striped people projecting on screens (a rare infelicity from such a graceful writer). The statement is... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/exporting-freedom/47251/ Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST Of the many catchphrases the Bush administration has given us — from "compassionate conservatism" and "no child left behind" to "regime change" and "axis of evil" — perhaps none is more dangerously intoxicating than the "freedom agenda." An international report released last week underscores the point. The phrase is supposed to summarize the overarching goal of President Bush's foreign policy. But like "regime change" — a happy-talk gloss for what happens when one country invades another... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/personal-is-political/46854/ Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST All those who hoped that the Democratic takeover of Congress would elevate the quality of political discussion — you doe-eyed innocents know who you are — have a right to be just a tad disappointed by now, almost two weeks into the new era. What we have seen so far, as the Democrats busily try to raise the minimum wage, jawbone drug prices, encourage embryonic stem-cell research, and derail President Bush's Iraq policy, is the final triumph of that dread phrase from the 1960s, "The Personal is... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/giving-to-alma-mater/45783/ Wed, 27 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST 'Tis the season when the spirit of compassion brims over and seeks expression in heartfelt outpourings of charity, especially if the outpourings qualify for favorable tax treatment. In honor of the season, therefore, columns this week and next will take as their subject the latest news from the complicated world of charity and philanthropy. Next week we'll look at some unexpected social science data about who in America gives how much to whom and why. This week we'll tell the cautionary story... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/when-teachers-teach-teaching/45093/ Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST As it usually does, the fall season brought another shower of blue-ribbon reports about the sorry state of American education. You could hear the cluck-clucking and tut-tutting from one coast to the other. But two reports in particular caught my eye, one for what it didn't say and one for what it did, boldly. Strangest of all, both reports came out of sectors of the education establishment that are not accustomed to self-criticism. The first was the work of the National Council of Teachers of... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/poof-goes-the-mirage-of-frist/44700/ Wed, 6 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST His loyal aides say, "Bill Frist will be back," but that's the kind of thing congressional staffers always say when their boss prematurely reaches the end of his political career, as Mr. Frist did last week. Roughly translated, it means: "Someday Bwana will return, and when he does we will once again have important jobs and excellent parking spaces." I wouldn't bet on it. The Senate majority leader, who had declined to run for another term as senator from Tennessee this year, announced that he... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/man-movie-and-legend/44320/ Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST The historian Todd Gitlin once wrote that with the assassination of Robert Kennedy, "a promise of redemption not only passed out of American politics, it passed out of ourselves." If only! Mr. Gitlin's overcooked sentiment perfectly expresses what another historian, Ronald Steel, calls "The Bobby Myth," the gauzy lens through which many — too many — Americans view President John F. Kennedy's brother who served as attorney general, New York senator, and, in the epochal year 1968, a pied-piper... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/like-reagan-like-mccain/43995/ Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST The other day on NBC's "Meet the Press" — where he appears with the routine frequency of Topo Gigio popping up on the old Ed Sullivan show — John McCain contemplated this month's Republican defeat and made sure to bring up the name Ronald Reagan. "I am a conservative Republican," Mr. McCain said, "in the school of Ronald Reagan — who, by the way, brought our party back after a defeat in 1976 and gave us hope and optimism." These days Republicans repeat Reagan's name the way a parched castaway... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-kind-of-bird-jim-webb-will-be/43584/ Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST Let those other pundits and reporters obsess over the new Democratic leadership as it brings its own special brand of "progressive reform" to Capitol Hill. (An all-vegan menu in the cafeteria? Hookahs in the cloakroom? Mandatory Birkenstocks in place of wingtips?) I will be directing my attention to the backbenches. I'll be watching Jim Webb. With his stunning upset of George Allen, the heavily favored Republican incumbent, the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia arrives as the most... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/last-election-day/43136/ Wed, 8 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST Let's take Mayor Bill White at his word. All he really wanted to do was bring the blessings of good health to the citizens of Houston. And if he happened to use city resources to lure several thousand of his fellow Democrats to the polls to vote for his favorite candidates, well, that was just coincidence. A fluke. "There was no political motivation whatsoever to do it," Mr. White told reporters. Still, you can imagine how some people — his Republican critics, for example — might have gotten... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/attacking-voters/42661/ Wed, 1 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST You might want to send your children from the room. Put the cat out while you're at it. And draw the blinds, in case the neighbors are getting nosy. The time has come, as it must every campaign season, to discuss negative ads. It is a subject sure to upset anyone with delicate sensibilities, a category that includes many members of the American political community — especially reporters and commentators, who apparently sit by their computer terminals and reach for the beta blockers every time... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/who-knew-democrats-could-not-spend/42205/ Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST In this space a few weeks ago, I stuck out my wattled neck and declared, with the kind of confidence only political columnists can summon, that the Democratic Party is busy developing policy ideas about how to run the government — assuming, of course, its members win control of Congress next month. And ever since, I've been looking for further evidence that my confidence was well-placed. I've come up empty. Hoping to find a new version of the GOP's winning "Contract with America" in 1994, I've... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/lakoff-effect/41335/ Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST Even if you ignore the Mark Foley Frolic — which they emphatically don't want you to do — it's no wonder Democrats are so giddy as the midterm elections approach. Some have leapfrogged the conventional wisdom altogether. Not only will they win a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 14 years, a few happy Democrats declare that they will take control of the Senate to boot. I'm not sure I'd go so far, but there's no denying the hopeful signs for Democrats. The polls, with... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/woodwards-allegiance/40863/ Wed, 4 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST If you live in Washington long enough, you get used to the Woodward Spasm — that unearthly convulsion that wracks the capital at irregular intervals, whenever the famed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward rears his handsome head and releases another of his insider tell-alls. Some of us manage to remain unconvulsed. But even I've been taken aback by the intensity of this latest Woodward Spasm, which accompanies the publication of his new book, "State of Denial: Bush at War Part III." As the... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/renouncing-sleaze-for-election/39972/ Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST Is it possible that Republicans are finally doing something about what Democrats like to call the "Republican culture of corruption" on Capitol Hill? After a year of ferocious denials, Rep. Bob Ney decided last week that maybe he'd done something wrong after all.The Ohio Republican agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges stemming from favors he did for clients of the notorious Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. The same day Mr. Ney's plea agreement became public, House Republicans decided... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hallowed-ground-or-sprawl/39259/ Thu, 7 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST Senator George Allen of Virginia has other things to worry about in his re-election campaign this fall — for example, his much-publicized use of a racial insult last month that led him to make a nearly endless series of apologies. But if he's done apologizing, at least for the moment, he might want to direct his attention to his rightward flank, where he will discover an unexpected source of irritation from his conservative constituency over the usually benign issue of historical preservation... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/small-price-to-pay/38997/ Fri, 1 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The origins of public disputes are often mysterious, so it's probably pointless to ask why so many people have suddenly started arguing about the continued existence of the American penny. Maybe it's just summer boredom. Maybe it's issue fatigue — a lighthearted escape from the weighty questions of war and terrorism. Whatever the source, one thing is certain: Articles about whether the American government should discontinue minting the 1 cent coin have inspired the greatest eruption of bad... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/sink-hole/35845/ Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST What with it being summer and all, and with the National Mall in the heart of Washington once more engorged with tens of thousands of tourists, I thought we might take another look at the Capitol Visitor Center, just to see how things are moving along. The Center is a 580,000 square foot facility being built underground at the east front of the Capitol building. It is part museum, part congressional office building, part refreshment stand, and part holding pen for tourists on their way to a... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/happy-birthday-sam/34830/ Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST As the U.S. approaches its birthday next month, we might ponder the plight of Laurie Verge and, by extension, the fate of a common history in the U.S. Laurie, a former history teacher, runs the Surratt House museum in Clinton, Maryland, about 10 miles south of Washington. The house was a stopover for John Wilkes Booth as he fled southward after killing Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Nowadays it offers a small but wonderfully comprehensive museum devoted to the Civil War. Since its opening in 1976... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/big-winner/34429/ Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and architect of the Republican takeover of Congress 14 years ago, managed to make some news last week. He told an audience of chin-pullers and longheads at the Brookings Institution that he might consider running for president in 2008. Let the world be shocked. This won't be news to us thrill-seekers who gather regularly at Gingrich's Web site, www.newt.org. There visitors find a little clickable box titled "Watch Newt on Road... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/next-big-idea/32916/ Wed, 17 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford must have been too busy. Or so I assumed, thumbing through the promotional literature from Americans for Campaign Reform, a new group that advocates government funding of all federal elections to the House, the Senate and the presidency. The group's very name is a kind of prose poem of high-mindedness - American, reformist, small "d" democratic. In the normal course of things such organizations automatically sign up Carter and Ford to sit on their honorary board as... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/beware-the-theocons/32079/ Wed, 3 May 2006 00:00:00 EST If you're one of those unhappy people who feel compelled to follow the burps and gurgles of the U.S. political debate, you will have noticed the recent introduction of a new word. The term "theocon" is suddenly everywhere. Worse, "theocons" themselves are suddenly everywhere - or so we are supposed to think. Theocon, as you might guess, is a portmanteau of two other words, theocracy and conservative, to describe conservatives whose religious beliefs, usually of the traditional Christian... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fighting-disillusionment/31668/ Wed, 26 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST I never saw Heifetz play the violin, or Hogan hit a five iron, or Pavlova do a pirouette. But I've seen John McCain work a reporter. And I knew I was seeing a master at the peak of his form. Here's what happens. The reporter - call him Joe - hops aboard McCain's old campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express. He knows the Arizona senator's well-known charms. He will not be seduced. Chatting amiably, Joe asks about a Republican colleague. With ironic solemnity, McCain responds by describing his... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/in-the-wrong-corners/28379/ Wed, 1 Mar 2006 00:00:00 EST Has anyone noticed how weird things are getting? When the controversy over the Dubai port deal was unloosed last week, the partisans ran, as they predictably will, to the corners of the ring, where they assumed the customary fighting stance - dukes up, lip curled, shoulders hunched. So far, so normal - except for this: They ran to the wrong corners! The Bush administration and its surrogates, routinely caricatured as right-wing Neanderthals, adopted the left-wing tactic of accusing their... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/lincolns-adaptability/27749/ Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:00:00 EST In this February no-man's land between Lincoln's birthday, once universally celebrated, and the bastard holiday of President's Day, which blurs Abraham Lincoln with the likes of Chester A. Arthur and Warren G. Harding, it's still a good idea to ponder Lincoln. It's always a good idea to ponder Lincoln. For Americans, the 16th president has been a bit like Saint Paul - all things to all men. Liberal Democrats have revered him no less than conservative Republicans, godless heathens no less than... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/farewell-to-ambition/27249/ Wed, 8 Feb 2006 00:00:00 EST Strolling through an Internet news database a few days after President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, I decided to do a little search. I entered the words "Bush" and "ambitious agenda" and - whoosh! - I was nearly swamped in the cascade of hits that resulted. Then I noticed something odd: The vast majority of the hits came from early last year, clustered around the time of the 2005 State of the Union address. In part, this is just more evidence of journalism's herd... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fixing-the-wrong-problem/26077/ Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST "If you want a friend in Washington," Harry Truman said famously, "get yourself a dog." You can see his point. For one thing, dogs are cuter than politicians, lobbyists and campaign consultants (unless the dog is a rottweiler and the consultant is Ralph Reed). More important, dogs are much less likely to get you into trouble. Nowadays, with the scandalous behavior of Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff roiling the capital, a public official must be concerned not only with who his friends... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/beyond-satire/25704/ Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST I think it was the novelist Philip Roth who first noticed that real life in the U.S. is now beyond parody. It is, to coin a clumsy but necessary word, unsatirizable. Every time a writer tries to poke fun at current events by exaggeration or irony, reality overtakes him and then, just for kicks, turns around and mows him down like roadkill. Reading the paper or watching the news, he is left only with the feeble, deflated observation: "You can't make this stuff up." This is the odd point at which... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/immigration-reform-hits-a-snag/24883/ Thu, 22 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST With the same obtuse inattention that has so often lifted them from the frying pan into the fire, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives ignored the wise counsel that appeared in this space and passed an immigration bill last week that is likely to do them, and the country, no good. That mistake inspires a second look at the issue and its baroque complications. There are two politically fashionable approaches to immigration reform. These are known, in the lingo of immigration mavens... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/puzzling-pathologies/23477/ Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST The late scholar and New York senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose greatest gift was for the saucy phrase, once dared to call it "speciation" - a change in biological circumstances that heralds the creation of a new species. What Moynihan was talking about back in 1994 was the cascade of alarming statistics about family life in the U.S. The unprecedented number of single-parent families, Moynihan said - along with rising rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, illegitimacy and cohabitation - might... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/new-civil-war/22750/ Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST Here at Gettysburg Souvenir & Gifts, just a rifle shot from the Gettysburg battlefield visitor center, a sign seduces passersby with news of the treasures for sale inside: 350 different T-shirts! 75 souvenir mugs! 225 flags! 60 toy guns! So maybe this isn't the best place to get all weepy about protecting sacred historical sites from the contamination of commercialism. Yet, if there's irony in the air, it doesn't deter John Neal and Van Zabava from voicing their complaints - complaints that... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/on-the-side-of-history/22106/ Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has touched off many amusing spectacles these last few weeks - including the insistence, by critics of the nomination, on the immeasurably high standards of intellectual accomplishment that a Supreme Court nominee must meet. You have to wonder which Supreme Court these high-minded critics have in mind. Surely they can't be referring to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has historically served as a lifetime employment... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/legacy-to-ponder/21696/ Wed, 19 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST I don't know who President George W. Bush will miss more, Tom DeLay or Leon Kass, who stepped down from their official jobs in Washington within days of each other last month. But I do have a belief about which of the two Bush allies made a more lasting and edifying contribution to a proper understanding of U.S. politics. And it's not DeLay. Maybe this judgment isn't fair, and by most practical measures it's certainly perverse. DeLay, after all, is a thoroughly political creature, the kind that... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/murrow-myth/21401/ Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST Perhaps no image better summarizes the problems with "Good Night and Good Luck," George Clooney's new movie about the legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, than the photo that appeared in the arts section of the New York Times on Sept. 23. It accompanied a story brimming over with lavish praise, as articles about this movie - and, for that matter, articles about Murrow - usually do. Clooney and his co-stars, Robert Downey Jr. and David Strathairn (who plays Murrow), are shown in a scene set in... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/attack-of-the-killer-fries/20777/ Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST For political zoologists, state attorneys general have long been one of the most fascinating species: third-tier politicians whose frustrations with their lowly position, combined with the corner-cutting ambition typical of modern litigators, force them to extremes of moral grandstanding that might shame an ordinary public servant. This is certainly true of Bill Lockyer, California's attorney general and perhaps the craftiest showboat in U.S. politics. His latest bid to grab headlines - and... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/congresss-hurricane/20019/ Wed, 14 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST "Holy Moly," I said the other morning, scanning the front page of the newspaper. I often use intemperate language when I'm reading the paper. The U.S. House of Representatives had just approved $51.8 billion to repair the damage left by Hurricane Katrina. What astonished me was that the bill didn't pass unanimously. Eleven congressmen voted against it. "Holy Moly," I said again. I often repeat myself in the morning. "Who are these guys?" Washington politicians like to pretend they're separated... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/think-reagan/19689/ Wed, 7 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST President George W. Bush's choice to fill the vacancy left by the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist only intensifies interest in the question: "So who is John Roberts, anyway?" Senate hearings, now postponed until Thursday at the earliest, likely won't be much help in answering the question. First Roberts must grin his way silently through a wind tunnel of senatorial eloquence called "opening statements." Then he'll be pelted with questions designed either to flatter him or to corner... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/lawmaker-to-lobbyist/19417/ Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:00:00 EST After an exhaustive fact-finding trip to the beach, this column was absolutely delighted to return to find the following news in its inbox. Former Representative Jennifer Dunn has registered as a lobbyist with DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP on behalf of the foil-making company Kurz Transfer Products. Why "delighted"? Perhaps "reassured" is a better word. This column has never met Jennifer Dunn. Indeed, this column has seldom thought much about her at all, and certainly it has no knowledge... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/highway-to-heaven/15068/ Wed, 8 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST President George W. Bush and his conservative allies like to portray themselves as reformers, intent on modernizing government programs like Social Security that were built for a bygone era and no longer fit the demands of the current age. There's something to the claim. If you look hard enough, you can see Bush's impulse for reform showing itself in the unlikeliest places - even, oddly enough, on the nation's highways. Bush has threatened to veto the highway bill now slithering its way through... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/thinking-nuclear/14381/ Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 EST When a self-selected group of Republicans and Democrats reached a compromise Monday night, agreeing to let a handful of President George W. Bush's judicial nominees come up for a vote on the Senate floor, they narrowly averted a crisis. This came as a great disappointment to much of official Washington. Here in the nation's capital, we love nothing better than a good crisis. That's why there seems to be a new Crisis of the Century every couple of months. And even when one is averted, as it was... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/no-faith-in-themselves/13272/ Wed, 4 May 2005 00:00:00 EST On the evening of April 24, "Justice Sunday," tens of thousands of politically conservative churchgoers came together via satellite hook-up to express their support for President Bush's judicial nominees. At the same time, a smaller but still substantial number of people in Washington came down with a dreadful case of the willies. Most of these jumpy people, it turns out, are liberals - or "progressives," as they prefer to be called nowadays. They seem to live in a state of constant worry over... ANDREW FERGUSON http://www.nysun.com/opinion/urbs-vsburbs/12919/ Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST When author and historian Joel Kotkin travels around the U.S. in his role as a consultant to city planners, he hears his clients repeat the same misconceptions again and again. He calls them urban legends. "The one you hear most often is, 'Cities are on the rebound! People are moving back to the cities!' " he says. "It takes different forms. The latest one I'm hearing is: 'Empty nesters are flocking back to the cities!' " There's a problem with legends, of course. They're not true. And so it is... Andrew Ferguson http://www.nysun.com/opinion/weathering-the-storm/12150/ Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST As we all prepare to celebrate Earth Day on April 22, let us hearken for a moment to Steven Hayward, who is one of nature's rare creatures - two parts scholar, one part troublemaker. As author of well-regarded biographies of both Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, Hayward is a man always worth hearkening to, even if, like me, you aren't completely sure what hearken means. I want you to hearken to Hayward because many people who should be, aren't. Hearkening, I mean. In addition to his work in... Andrew Ferguson http://www.nysun.com/opinion/uncertain-spring/11364/ Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST If you thought (hoped? prayed?) that the Larry Summers controversy at Harvard University was over, consigned at last to the dustbin of pop history somewhere between the Ben and J-Lo romance and the Robert Blake murder trial, then you underestimated the geniuses on the school's faculty of arts and sciences. On March 15, two months after the controversy began, they approved a resolution declaring that the "faculty lacks confidence" in Mr. Summers, Harvard's embattled president. In other words...