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During my more than 60 years of covering national politics, I have never seen a candidate's principles and character so effectively tarnished — after so extraordinarily inspiring a start — as Barack Obama's.

During my more than 60 years of covering national politics, I have never seen a candidate's principles and character so effectively tarnished — after so extraordinarily inspiring a start — as Barack Obama's. He has come to resemble another mellifluous orator I came to know in Boston during my first time reporting on a campaign — James Michael Curley, the skilful prestidigitator whom Spencer Tracy masterfully played in the movie "The Last Hurrah." Obama's deflation has not been due to ruthless opposition research by John McCain's team but by the "change" candidate himself. Like millions of Americans, I, for a...

In 2006, Sarah Palin became Alaska's youngest and first woman governor after having earned a reputation as a determined and successful advocate of ethics reform in politics. In the primary, she defeated an incumbent Republican governor and then a former two-term Democratic governor. During her first year in office, as reported by the Associated Press on May 10, she "distanced herself from the old guard, powerful members of the state GOP (and) stood up to the oil interests that hold great power in Alaska, and with bipartisan support in the statehouse, she won a tax increase on the oil companies'...

DFU NOTE: Mickey Kantor's explosive comments from the past will likely cause his removal as advisor to Hillary. He was instrumental in dealing with one of Clinton's assault victims, Elizabeth Ward Gracen. GRACEN TOLD FRIENDS IT WAS NOT CONSENSUAL. ================================================================== It is this relentless obstruction of justice that I began to detail last week. Also on the list of Clinton's throwaway women who should have been placed in the federal Witness Protection Program is Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Arkansas's former Miss America, who had a brief bout of intimacy with Clinton in 1983. During the 1992 presidential campaign she received calls...

I dearly wish our Founding Fathers James Madison and Alexander Hamilton had been able to see Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas explain on C-SPAN's "America and the Courts" (March 28) why they and nearly all their colleagues are so hostilely against allowing millions of Americans to see the High Court on television during the revealing oral arguments. On that C-SPAN program, in excerpts from the Kennedy-Thomas testimony before a House committee, Kennedy, sternly lecturing that Congress should not legislate this intrusion into a key process in how and why they make their decisions, which affect so many...

Overlooked in the wake of the midterm elections and the Supreme Court oral arguments on partial-birth abortion is a South Dakota abortion case in the federal courts that casts a sharp shaft of light on the national abortion debate. The case is not connected to partial-birth abortion or to a South Dakota ban on nearly all abortions in that state which was thumpingly defeated by the voters on Nov. 7. This case is about a South Dakota law that gets to the very core of the abortion controversy: When do we become human beings? The law would require that doctors...

Among the celebrities journeying to Connecticut to support Ned Lamont's campaign to unseat Sen. Joseph Lieberman (now running as an independent, having lost the Democratic primary to Lamont) is Michael Schiavo, known around the world as the husband who finally succeeded in having the feeding tube removed from his late wife, Terri Schiavo. Schiavo pointedly reminded Connecticut voters that Sen. Lieberman has supported the president and Congressional Republicans in passing emergency legislation involving federal courts in an attempt to save Terri Schiavo's life while he, Michael Schiavo, was respecting her wishes — which she could no longer communicate — to...

<p>Every year, the Frenchtown Elementary School in New Jersey presents an after-school talent show, open to kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. The performers can choose to play an instrument, dance, create a skit or select a song.</p> <p>This past school year, a second-grader decided to sing Awesome God. But during rehearsal, the teacher in charge, on hearing the title and lyrics, told the child that principal Joyce Brennan would have to approve that song. Brennan contacted the attorney for the school district.</p>

During my childhood in 1930s Boston, anti-Semitism was as common as baked beans. Since then, I've not been surprised at sudden eruptions of the hatred of Jews, whatever the context. During the Connecticut Democratic primary contest between Sen. Joseph Lieberman and contender Ned Lamont, I was not, therefore, shocked by the emergence of centuries-old standard anti-Semitism. As Lanny Davis, special counsel to President Clinton, and a Lieberman supporter, reminded us in the Aug. 8 Wall Street Journal, blogging anti-Semites had Lieberman in their sights back on the Daily Kos Web site on Dec. 7 from a contributor: "as everyone knows,...

Pakistan's Mukhtar Mai became an inspiration to human rights defenders throughout the world when -- after being publicly gang-raped by order of a village council for an alleged act by her brother, which she was not involved -- she bravely defied the council and got a higher court to overturn the verdict. On Jan. 20, she was scheduled to be interviewed at the United Nations, but, as the New York Times reported, the United Nations canceled her appearance. At the U.N. television studios, she was to appear in "An Interview with Mukhtar Mai, The Bravest Woman on Earth." But Pakistan...

Laura Bush has said of Pakistan's Mukhtar Mai that she "proves that one woman can really change the world." In 2002, by order of a village council, Mai was gang raped publicly and paraded naked before hundreds of onlookers for purported misconduct not involving her, but by her brother. Despite threats, she convinced a higher Pakistan court to overturn the verdict, giving the compensation money to open a school in her village. But on Jan. 20, The New York Times reported that her scheduled appearance at the United Nations that day was canceled by the United Nations. At the United...

NAT HENTOFF joined the Village Voice in 1957. His column, “Liberty Beat,” is published weekly in the Voice. He has worked as a columnist for the Washington Post and as a reporter for the New Yorker. Currently he also appears weekly in the Washington Times, writes a weekly column for United Media Syndicate, and is a contributor on jazz and country music for the Wall Street Journal. Twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, Mr. Hentoff has been recognized with a number of awards including the National Press Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism and the American...

On Nov. 28, in Vatican City, Pope Benedict XVI said to the archbishop of Khartoum, "The horror of events unfolding in Darfur points to the need for stronger international resolve to ensure security and basic human rights" there. Reuters, reporting the pope's concern, noted, as much of the world knows, that hundreds of thousands of black Africans have died of violence or disease, and more than 2 million have been driven from their homes. On Dec. 13, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told the U.N. Security Council — which has evaded all direct responsibility...

One of the city's finest writers, Nat Hentoff, has been at the Village Voice for more than 50 years. While one can label this publication as a left of center staple, the award-winning Mr. Hentoff is much harder to categorize. Earlier this month, the Human Life Foundation honored him with its Defender of Life Award and in his acceptance speech he identified himself as "a Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, pro-lifer." There is a big distinction between being merely anti-abortion and being pro-life. Mr. Hentoff has consistently been a defender of all human life, whether it be a Baby Doe or...

This year's grand marshal of New York's Columbus Day Parade was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He also took time to speak about his work on WNBC-TV's "The Wall Street Journal Report" on Oct. 16. Moderator Maria Bartiromo noted that the court, "one of the most powerful and least visible institutions in America ... can make tremendously important political and social decisions." But when she asked this most vivid of the nine justices about the persistent call for the court to allow its oral arguments to be televised -- so that the reasoning of these "least-visible" makers of decisions that...

For years, "diversity" has been a driving goal for college administrators, but only when tied to racial diversity, which itself is usually attained through affirmative action. But now, influential members of the establishment — led by the American Council on Education — have actually recognized the crucial "diversity" needed in all levels of education — diversity of ideas. Eureka! The present domination by liberal opinion on many college faculties — often verging on this majority's intolerant orthodoxies — was revealed in a recent study, "Politics and Professional Advancement among Faculty," by Stanley Rothman, emeritus professor of government at Smith College;...

You wouldn't know it from The New York Times or nearly all the media in New York (the purported center of communications for this nation), but in Havana on May 20—for the first time in Fidel Castro's 46 years of brutal rule—there was a public mass meeting, with subversive shouts of "Freedom! Freedom!" As Anita Snow reported for the Associated Press, "A little more than half [of the 200] present [for the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba] were delegates from diverse opposition groups around the island. The rest were organizers, international journalists, diplomats and other special guests." The...

Cuban civil society By Nat Hentoff The Washington Times, May 16, 2005 Despite Fidel Castro's prisons holding ever more dissenters in foulconditions, courageous Cubans will be in Havana on May 20 for a general meeting of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, a force for democracy encompassing 365 independent groups. Its members are still free in mind and spirit, and aware they too may wind up behind bars for coming. Among the delegates to that May 20 meeting are two librarians from eastern Cuba, Elio Enrique Chavez and Luis Elio de la Paz. They cannot attend, however, because...

The judicial confirmation process has become so savage in recent years that it would take a brave nominee to offer himself or herself for consideration. California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, for example, has been charged in a recent NAACP "Action Alert" with being "hostile to civil rights" and "having extreme right-wing views." I do not agree with all of Justice Brown's opinions, but I write this to show how prejudicially selective the prosecution of her is by the Democrats, the NAACP, People For the American Way and her other critics. She was filibustered in the last Congress, and...

For all the world to see, a 41-year-old woman, who has committed no crime, will die of dehydration and starvation in the longest public execution in American history. She is not brain-dead or comatose, and breathes naturally on her own. Although brain-damaged, she is not in a persistent vegetative state, according to an increasing number of radiologists and neurologists. Among many other violations of her due process rights, Terri Schiavo has never been allowed by the primary judge in her case—Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, whose conclusions have been robotically upheld by all the courts above him—to have her own...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Prisoners of conscienceBy Nat HentoffPublished January 31, 2005          The public library in Vermillion, South Dakota, celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, and also exemplified the freedom to read in this country by being the only American public library to show concern for those independent Cuban librarians whom Fidel Castro sent to prison for 20 and more years in 2003 for daring to allow Cubans the freedom to read.     On Nov. 18, the Vermillion Public Library Board of Trustees voted to sponsor the Dulce Maria Loynaz Library in Havana, Cuba, which, like other imperiled independent...

Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff Telling it like it is There Is More To Be Explored In Columbia University's Middle East Studies Than Israel December 28th, 2004 2:33 AM Freedom of expression is an essential part of University life, but it does not include intimidation. Columbia University's Statement on Academic Honesty. [Professor Joseph Massad] was teaching the class about the Jenin incidents [during the Palestinian resistance] and a girl raised her hand and tried to bring up an alternative point of view and before she could get her point across, he quickly . . . shouted at her, 'I will...

Of all the targets of vitriol and attempted ambushes during the presidential campaign, I most admired John O'Neill of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for his calm determination to stand his ground on his charges against John Kerry's Vietnam service in Unfit for Command, the book he co-authored. O'Neill was called a ''liar'' to his face on a number of TV appearances, and, on an Oct. 14 ''Nightline,'' ABC-TV's Ted Koppel actually sent a crew to Vietnam to film alleged eyewitnesses in order to disprove one of the accounts -- how Kerry won his Silver Star -- in Unfit...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com The U.N. is hopelessBy Nat HentoffPublished October 11, 2004          The genocide in Rwanda was over before most of the world knew it was happening. But now that the media is covering the black African victims of the genocide by the government of Sudan and its murderous Arab Janjaweed accomplices, few can claim ignorance of these crimes that do not spare the youngest children. And the United Nations, as usual, folds its hands.     President Bush at the United Nations, and Secretary of State Colin Powell before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have officially called these...

On my last visit to the Darfur area in Sudan, in June, I found a man groaning under a tree. He had been shot in the neck and jaw and left for dead in a pile of corpses. . . . Under the next tree I found a 4-year-old orphan girl caring for her starving 1-year-old brother. And under the tree next to that was a woman whose husband had been killed, along with her 7- and 4-year-old sons, before she was gang-raped and mutilated. —Nicholas D. Kristof The New York Times, September 11 - Colin Powell, on September 9,...

With one stroke, candidate John Kerry could do a lot to lift the fog of the media war over his four-month tour of duty in Vietnam if he were finally to authorize the release of all his service records in the current resurrection of that deadly conflict.

Monday, Aug. 23, 2004 12:39 a.m. EDT Hentoff: Kerry in War Record Cover-up Longtime civil libertarian and columnist for the left-wing Village Voice, Nat Hentoff charged Sunday that the Kerry campaign is engaged in a transparent cover-up of the Massachusetts Democrat's war record and an attempt to muzzle freedom of speech. In an interview with WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg, Hentoff noted that the Pentagon has responded to a Washington Post Freedom of Information Act request for Kerry's full military file by turning over just six pages of their 100-plus page Kerry dossier, with a spokesman explaining that Kerry himself wouldn't...

Hentoff says there is a "SMOKING GUN" in today's Washington Post article (by Dobbs) about the Swift Boat Vets for the truth--- Hentoff quotes the sentence by Dobbs that KERRY REFUSES TO RELEASE HIS RECORDS. This, according to Hentoff, is the smoking gun. What is Kerry hiding, asks Hentoff.Hentoff is also ticked off about the lack of reporting of Kerry/DEMOCRAT connections to their 527s. He mentions HAROLD ICKES as one of the main culprits.Hentoff accuses mainstream journalists of MALPRACTICE. He says the antidote is the book, Unfit for Command, which is flying off the shelves of bookstores. He says the...

When Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and DemocraticNational Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, along with jubilant Democrats, appeared at the Washington premier of Michael Moore's"documentary," "Fahrenheit 9/11," I began to realize that some of us in this divided nation are living in a different, surreal world. Mr. Moore, for example, has said of the terrorists in Iraq: "They are not the enemy. They are the revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?" Even the news media are unthinkingly describing murderous bombers, beheaders and assassins as "the insurgency." Historically, that phrase often...

The is the first of two columns on the genocide in Darfur, in the west of Sudan: The news media can no longer be blamed for not bringing light to the world about the more than 30,000 black African Muslims murdered by the Arab Muslim Janjaweed in Darfur, Sudan. The world has also been told of nearly 2 million of the survivors having been removed from their homes, many huddled in remote camps where epidemic diseases add to the corpses. And there is no doubt that the government of Sudan arms and supports the Janjaweed. --SNIP-- Of course this is...

Beyond Race-based Affirmative Action Many college commencement speeches are forgotten by the time the graduates and their parents have come home. This year, there was an exception that should be read by all high-school guidance counselors (particularly in schools with students of working-class and low-income families); college admissions officers; and parents who are not among the upper-middle-class. At Amherst College in Massachusetts, the speaker was its president, Anthony Marx. It was both refreshing and yet troubling to hear him cut through the familiar arguments about race-based affirmative action. He underscoredafundamental inequality in access to colleges that affects so many of...

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, said in a March 19 BBC interview that the killings, abductions and organized rapes in the far western region of Darfur in Sudan is "the world's greatest humanitarian crisis, and I don't know why the world isn't doing more about it." The world, including the United Nations and United States, was silent in 1994 during the 800,000 murdered in the genocide in Rwanda. Kapila, who was in that nation during the slaughter, says that "the only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers involved." In his March 27 column in...

Two pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives have met with Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe to demonstrate the party’s majority in Congress evaporated as it became more entrenched in the abortion-rights camp. Reps. James Oberstar of Minnesota and Bart Stupak of Michigan provided the following statistics to McAuliffe in a March 4 meeting, syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff reported: In the 1977-78 Congress, Democrats possessed a majority of 292 seats, which included 125 pro-lifers. Now, Democrats hold only 204 of 435 seats, with only 28 pro-lifers. Oberstar and Stupak told McAuliffe pro-life Democrats could win Republican-leaning races in some...

'What Does Hentoff Know of the Real Cuba?'The Cuban people are the freest people on Earth.—Ignacio González Planas, Cuban minister of information and communications, Juventud Rebelde, January 18 Years ago, at the Cuban mission to the United Nations, I asked the revolutionary Cuban icon Che Guevara, who professed not to understand English, "Can you conceive of any time in the future when there will be free elections in Cuba?" Not waiting for the translator, Guevara laughed heartily at my simplemindedness. "In Cuba?" He said, and moved on. All these years, there have been men and women in Fidel Castro's prisons...

The Abandoned Librarians Castro's Judges Burn Books 'Lacking Usefulness' January 29th, 2004 1:30 PM Carla Hayden, president of the American Library Association: "committed to intellectual freedom," with certain exceptions (Hilary Schwab Photography) s I've been reporting in this column, there has been a fierce civil war within the American Library Association as to whether that body—the largest organization of librarians in the world—will help free the 10 librarians locked up in Fidel Castro's gulag for the next 20 or more years for making available to Cubans such subversive documents as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and George...

The Media Blew This One Big-Time [The] Supreme Court . . . upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law . . . is cause for celebration. —New York Times lead editorial, "A Campaign Finance Triumph," December 11 [The] decision will do far more to restrict political speech than to curtail the influence of money on politics. —Anthony Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union, The New York Sun, December 11 [The law] cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government. —Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, U.S....

<p>At the Constitutional Conventionin Philadelphia in 1787, there was particularly intense debate on the separation of powers between what became our three branches of government. On Dec. 18, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the president has breached that core element of our democracy.</p>

Janice Rogers Brown, the black daughter of Southern sharecroppers who became a California Supreme Court justice, has been nominated by the president to an influential District of Columbia Court of Appeals seat. Because she is so persistently independent, 14 well-known law professors — Democratic, Republican and Independent — have written the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting her. But committee Democrats find her "out of the mainstream," and unacceptably conservative. The Judiciary Committee has confirmed Brown by a party-line vote. On the floor, she faces a Democratic filibuster.

As New Yorkers living in the city most affected by September 11, we acknowledge the need to protect our safety, but as people who prize our Constitution and Bill of Rights, we believe it is impermissible to suspend freedom in the name of preserving it. — New York Bill of Rights Defense Campaign leaflet, New York City Hall, May 28 On the outskirts of the May 28 press conference on the steps of City Hall to herald the resolution submitted to the City Council by the New York Civil Liberties Union's Bill of Rights Defense Campaign, there were other rallying...

When I was a young girl, new neighbors moved into the house next door. I knew they were Cubans who had to escape Castro. They were, at one time, quite wealthy, had servants, lived the good life, did an honourable business and thought life would be that way for their children, too. But then Castro came into power, murdered the woman's brother for being a Catholic priest, took over the home for his troops and my neighbors escaped with their lives. My mother had to teach Marianna how to use the oven and cook the basics. My father befriended the...

A decisive question before the Supreme Court in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases is whether assuring diversity—of race and ethnicity—in student bodies is enough of a compelling state interest to justify the school's admission preferences for blacks and Hispanics. Gender has also been a factor at other colleges. As former University of Georgia president Charles Knapp has emphasized, students, after graduation, will have to work with people from "different ethnic and cultural backgrounds," and this essential skill "cannot be fully acquired by students whose educational and life experiences have been racially or culturally homogeneous." This is also the...

The Justice Department . . . seems to be running amok. . . . This agency right now is the biggest threat to personal liberty in the country. —Republican conservative Dick Armey, former House majority leader, New Republic, October 21, 2002 This nation . . . has no right to expect that it always will have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. . . . [If] the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate. —United States Supreme Court, Ex Parte Milligan, 1866, declaring Abraham Lincoln's suspension...

Nat HentoffThe Facts: Schumer v. PickeringGlaring Racial Insensitivity?February 7th, 2003 4:00 PM hen Charles Pickering's Presidential Nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote, the keystone charge against him by Senator Charles Schumer was that the Mississippi federal district judge had resisted giving a white defendant in a cross-burning case a seven-and-a-half-year sentence as suggested by the federal sentencing guidelines. Pickering had insisted that the sentence was disproportionately heavy. Charles Schumer accused Pickering of "glaring racial insensitivity," and, at a press conference, said that Bush's choice of...