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High-Minded or High-Handed, Lieberman is Always High Drama
Tweet Share on Facebook December 22, 2009 Comment (8)By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The contrarian senator from Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman, confounded friends and foes by flying in the eye of a snowstorm--alone against even his own crowd as the Senate nears a Christmas Eve vote on healthcare reform. A coalition of Connecticut rabbis couldn't change his mind on opposing the public option and Medicare buy-in. That's roughly the talk and take around town as Lieberman single-handedly forced the Senate Democratic caucus to forego those parts in their version of healthcare reform. Some liberals consider this signing away the heart and soul of the goal. The whole thing is rupturing the "comity" of his divided colleagues. Some Democrats seem surprised, even though the Independent is not one of them.
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Editor & Publisher's Demise Another Nail in Print Journalism's Coffin
Tweet Share on Facebook December 16, 2009 Comment (6)By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The news struck like a Dickensian knell right in time for Christmas: the abrupt closure of Editor & Publisher, the fine authoritative journal that covered the American newspaper industry for more than a century. Don't they know that newspapers are the republic's lifeblood, ever since the glory days of the 1790s?
The Nielson Company, corporate owner of the shuttered publication, played Scrooge to the hilt. It also announced the demise of Kirkus Reviews, a respected trade journal for the book publishing industry and another boon to a literate citizenry.
Many journalists like me, who will never get the ink out of their blood, are left with little except scant hopes and dreamlike memories in a bleak, fallow season for our field. As a refugee from the Baltimore Sun writing in Washington, I picture the paper in a time of high cotton—with a couple of Pulitzer Prizes to greet new hires in our first two springs about a decade ago. After covering a ghastly "50 cents" murder trial early on, I was sent out to write a tulip garden story—80,000 bulbs in a feature headlined "Rhapsody in Bloom"—to see the other side of life.
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Health Reform’s Missing Ingredient: A Charismatic Citizen Leader
Tweet Share on Facebook December 10, 2009 Comment (2)By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Where have you gone, American heroine and suffragette Alice Paul? Your valiant spirit might stir and start street marches in Washington, this time on healthcare reform.
Here your memory lives in some young hearts.
A funny thing happened the other night when I went to a documentary screening at Georgetown University on the woman's suffrage movement, led by Paul nearly a century ago. A standing-room-only audience of 200 students, a handful of professors and the dean of American Studies, Bernard Cook, viewed the shining premiere of the student-produced Remember the Ladies. Among those telling the tale on camera were a congresswoman, a regional park manager (where women were detained), and me. We seized a chance to share some thoughts on someone who was truly great.
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Obama's Afghanistan Speech Was a Brilliant Start, But Will This End As Well?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (6)By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It was the best possible speech a president about to accept the Nobel Peace Prize could have given as he prepared to renew fighting a long war.
I give Barack Obama enormous credit for going up to West Point yesterday to face young Army officers in training who will bear the brunt of his decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers to rugged, tribal, benighted Afghanistan. You could see the thought written on some of their solemn young faces—so this is what I signed up for, spelled out right here.
The still-young president, 48, did not know his audience well, and neither did they know him after less than a year in office. But the man from Illinois was ready to speak and they were ready to listen with respect, yes sir, with none of the antagonism that accompanied the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, whenever he walked on military ground.
All in all, Obama played the part of commander in chief extremely well, with a sort of elegiac elegance. He quoted Abraham Lincoln again, but in a different way, much like a prayer.
