Something new at TPM. We’re busily working away on the TPM redesign. The site won’t look very different. But it’ll have a number of features readers 
have been asking for for quite some time. A printer friendly function, easier searching, an RSS feed. There may even be a way to get a discount on your prescription drug costs. But we’re still working on that. And the financing may be a bit touchy.
In any case, here’s something new at the site that we’re rolling out before the redesign. TPM reviews books. But there are many books that I’d like to recommend that I either haven’t had time to read cover to cover or won’t be able to review in a formal way. That’s where the TPM Featured Book comes in — right over there on the left.
Not all of them will be ones I agree with in every respect. I’m actually far from being a doctrinaire civil libertarian — so there are points and attitudes that I disagree with in the first choice, The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism. But airing these issues is critical for as co-editor Richard Leone says in the introduction, “history teaches us that bypassing public deliberation almost inevitably leads to outcomes that the nation ends up regretting.”
My feeling on the balance between civil liberties and counter-terrorism is that I’m willing to countenance quite a lot that wouldn’t pass ACLU muster if I’m convinced those measures will help prevent terrorist attacks against Americans. (Living in DC in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the anthrax scare tended to focus my attention and priorities in this respect.) What’s consistently troubled me about this administration is the eagerness to adopt certain tactics which don’t seem to make us measureably safer at all simply because they appeal to a pre-existing and ideologically-driven hostility to civil liberties.
In any case, this is an important book, which I’m glad to recommend. It’s got contributions from all the people you’d want to hear from: Alan Brinkley, E.J. Dionne, Tony Lewis, John Podesta and others. Stop by Amazon and take a look.
