In August, when PBS broadcast a shamefully worshipful, 3-hour "documentary" of Reagan Administration Secretary of State George Shultz's supposedly heroic career, I posted "What Politics Does to History," exposing the fraudulent scholarship of the man who'd written most of Shultz's memoir and is now teaching students at Yale. At least, though, Charles Hill has had the wit to seek refuge in "literature" for his rather chilling take on history, as I showed also in Foreign Policy.

The historian Victor Davis Hanson is something else again, a magpie of misplaced, forced analogies from ancient to post-modern events. Hanson conscripts his studies of ancient Greek wars to the service of the Bush national-security agenda, which he'd love to revive. Now he's done it again in Makers of Ancient Strategy, an anthology I've just reviewed for the new, fall issue of Democracy journal. And Hanson, true to form, is ranting about the review.

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This week-end, the so-called settlements moratorium runs out, and the talks face--so the argument goes--their first moment of truth. Today, at the UN, President Obama called on Israel to extend the moratorium and, pushing on an open door, is rallying international opinion, the Quartet, etc., to this position. His fear, clearly, is that Abbas will walk out of the room. Netanyahu's fear is that Lieberman and/or Shas will walk out of a different room; and so his US Ambassador is trying to rally organized American Jews to prepare for the prospect of "pressure."

I don't mean to underestimate the importance of this moment. The issue of settlements has become symbolic of whether or not Netanyahu, bowing to American diplomacy, and the looming threat of economic isolation, will be prepared to move from the status quo. Nor should anyone doubt that the status quo works in favor of the settlers and their supporters, freeze or no freeze. But as I have said in this space before, the issue itself, at least as it is posed most commonly, is overblown and even a little misleading.

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Robert Reich's new book, "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future" is now out. See the original post here.

Without doubt, history books will remember the sweeping health care reform law passed exactly six months ago as a major historic milestone and President Barack Obama's most significant achievement. But the reform bill hasn't yet won the hearts and minds of most Americans, who don't understand it, or who, depending on their political views, think that it doesn't go far enough, or goes too far.

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General Motors has given $90,500 to candidates in the current election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Hmmm? Last time I looked, you and I and every other U.S. taxpayer owned a majority of GM. That means some of the money we're earning as GM owners is being used to influence how we vote in the upcoming mid-term election.

To put it another way, we taxpayers are paying some people (GM executives) to tell us how we should vote for another group of people (House and Senate candidates) who will decide how our taxes will be used in the future.

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Fiscal policy is deadlocked. So, apparently, is monetary policy.

The Fed's decision today (Tuesday) to keep short-term interest rates near zero is no surprise. What's odd is its apparent decision not to boost the economy by buying hundreds of billions of bonds -- despite its acknowledgment that "the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months," and that prices are rising too slowly for comfort (i.e., we might be facing deflation).

Every indicator suggests third-quarter growth will be as slow if not slower than in the second quarter. Consumer confidence is down. Retail sales are down. Housing sales are down. Commercial real estate is in trouble.

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Well-meaning supporters of naming a scholarship fund for Martin Peretz at Harvard lost sight of something far more important to the future of American higher education and the republic than the reprehensible things Peretz wrote about Muslims on his blog. Even those opposed to Harvard's decision today to accept the fund named for Peretz have erred, I think, in limiting their objections to his "bigotry."

Peretz's supporters, some of them his former students, seem determined not to notice what he has become in recent years. And Harvard seems determined not to notice what his battening himself onto a college he literally worships actually portends for its soul.

What's really appalling -- but what no one seems to want to face -- is the rise of people like this who, whatever their past ideals and pretensions, haven't kept faith with liberal education (let alone scholarship) yet are buying themselves more presence and prestige on campuses. That is skewing undergraduate education in ways few understand. Peretz isn't the worst villain, but he is a vivid example of what's wrong.

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Anyone who does not believe that the ground has shifted under the status quo lobby (AIPAC, AJC, ADL, Conference of Presidents) should check out this ad that J Street ran in the Times and the WSJ.

I would guess the two ads cost J Street a few hundred thousand dollars which clearly demonstrates that J Street is going, as we Jews like to say, "from strength to strength."

Of course, the terrain on the Hill has barely changed (liberal Democrats like Anthony Weiner, Chris Van Hollen, Alan Grayson, Steny Hoyer, and Chuck Schumer make sure it doesn't).

But the President seems determined to push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement and, when it is sewed up (not this round, I expect), J Street will help Obama put it over. It helps that it is the first pro-peace Jewish group that actually is not underfunded!

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Since we rebuilt our commenting system, we have been asking you, our readers, to log into our system using identities created on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or Yahoo. Many thousands of you have been doing this without a hitch. But we heard from many who said you do not want to use identities on other networks (or frankly have anything to do with them) mostly for privacy reasons. To help this group out, we are offering a new login option: MyOpenID. If you're concerned about your privacy and don't want to register with Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or Google, read on to find out why this might be the right registration and login option for you.

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Why is there an enthusiasm gap? Let me illustrate.

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I've been trying for a few days now to suggest that everyone who's lathered up over the possibility of Harvard's naming a research fund for New Republic editor/bigot Martin Peretz pause to notice another danger, compounding bigotry, that would come with bestowing any honors on the man.

I mean the danger that liberal education, beleaguered ideologically and strapped fiscally, is being bought into and bought off by many people who, like Peretz, crave academic prestige and felicity in hopes that it can cleanse their blunders and sins.

A month ago here, I showed how some failed, aging neo-cons and Vulcans have been flocking to Yale for this purpose, cheapening American higher-education's freedoms and accomplishments in the name of the hoary cause of affirming the "relevance" of their star-crossed careers to the "real world."

No one seems to understand or care that 1) Self-righteous condemnations of "bigotry" can end up serving the enemies of academic freedom (Yes, children, such things can happen, as Orwell understood when no one else would); and that 2) Exposing and excoriating the bigotry of people like Peretz often serves to distract attention from racial idiocies of the left that always need to be exposed, from a civic-republican perspective, alongside those on the right - as I showed in at some length, and to some effect, in the 1990s in.... The New Republic.

Barack Obama understood this. Shouldn't we?

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The entire U.S. administration's Middle East A-team--President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and Special Envoy Mitchell--is defying the mass majority of political analysts by dismissing the status quo in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, and insisting that the latest round of Palestinian-Israeli direct talks has the potential to lead to an agreement which will resolve the conflict. I have a deep fear that they may be correct in predicting an agreement will be signed, but I do not have an iota of confidence that it will end the conflict.

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Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent -- whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy -- or the rest of us?

Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.

Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they'll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.

But before this can be a defining election issue in the midterms, Democrats have to bring it to a vote. And they've got to do it in the next few weeks, not wait until a lame-duck session after Election Day.

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Three economic reports today (Friday) that should sound warning bells about deflation.

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After the victories of many of the insurgent primary candidates she's sponsored, Sarah Palin is off to Iowa today (Friday) for a high-profile series of political events. Is it possible she's looking to make a run in 2012? Do birds fly?

Republicans are being fueled by a so-called "enthusiasm gap" but their biggest worry leading up to the midterms should be the "crackpot gap."

In Delaware, Palin-endorsed tea partier Christine O'Donnell is so far right she's called "delusional" by Delaware's GOP leader. In Kentucky, Palin-favored Rand Paul says the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn't apply to businesses. In Colorado, tea partier Ken Buck talks of getting rid of the 17th amendment, which provides for the direct election of senators. In Nevada, Palin-favored Sharon Angle has called for "2nd Amendment remedies" if Congress doesn't change hands.

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