We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they think carefully about how their decisions will affect the court's own legitimacy and authority.

In 1984, Fred Korematsu went back to federal court, seeking to have his conviction voided retroactively on the theory that the government had withheld crucial facts from the judiciary. The court agreed with him. The Department of Justice and the Army, it found, had distorted the record to make it appear that there was a legitimate security concern.113 A few years later, Congress granted reparations of twenty thousand dollars to each Japanese-American who had been interned.

Many Muslims in Saudi Arabia believe that the core values of Islam, namely acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty and basic human equality before God, are themselves compatible with liberty, equality and free political choice.

Cyber attacks are not what makes the cool war cool. As a strategic matter, they do not differ fundamentally from older tools of espionage and sabotage.

We like democracy because why? The pathologies of the U.S. version are so obvious in the aftermath of the latest averted crisis that we need to ask ourselves whether it’s worth it - and why electoral democracy hasn’t self-destructed before. Should Tunisians or Egyptians opt for the Chinese model, where rational autocrats may restrict rights, but no one threatens to blow up world markets in the name of an 18th-century tax protest?

Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions?

Many Muslims in Saudi Arabia believe that the core values of Islam, namely acknowledgement of God's sovereignty and basic human equality before God, are themselves compatible with liberty, equality and free political choice.

A constitution that is a deal between the Shiites and Kurds is not a deal.

After 9/11, most Americans were in no mood to talk with our enemies in the Middle East, whatever those enemies' ideology, and the Bush administration's policies of invasion and pre-emption reflected that sentiment.

Prisoners, according to the law, who are non-U.S. citizens and are detained outside the U.S. - including in Guantanamo Bay - are denied 'habeas corpus.' They are also denied the right to claim the Geneva Conventions confer certain rights on them.