The End of Hypocrisy with Martha Finnemore

The U.S. government seems outraged that people are leaking classified materials about its less attractive behavior. It certainly acts that way: three years ago, after Chelsea Manning, an army private then known as Bradley Manning, turned over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, U.S. authorities imprisoned the soldier under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed cruel and inhumane. The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, appearing on Meet the Press shortly thereafter, called WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, “a high-tech terrorist.”

More recently, following the disclosures about U.S. spying programs

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Other Writing:

Essay

Tom Coburn Doesn’t Like Political Science

Sen. Tom Coburn doesn’t like political science. Since 2009 the Oklahoma senator has been trying to ban National Science Foundation funds for political-science research. His new Senate colleague, Jeff Flake of Arizona, has an M.A. in political science, but doesn’t like it either. Flake tried to block NSF funds when he was in the House ...
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Essay

The Wrong Way to Punish Iran with Abraham Newman

During the war on terror, the United States quietly turned the world financial system into a hidden empire. The American government used the power of the dollar and its influence over obscure organizations such as the Swift financial messaging service to monitor what its adversaries and terrorists were doing and, in some cases, to cut ...
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