The New Republic

Those of us who courageously and valiantly defend the NBA as being superior to college basketball generally face an uphill struggle. It’s true that the NCAA is a blatantly corrupt organization, and that the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant (who both went from high school to the pros) are nowhere to be found in the college game. But professional basketball is burdened with giant egos, often anemic effort, and too much ball-hogging. Only the sheer quality of the top players can cover up these problems. READ MORE >>

In 1964, an ambitious young student at the University of Louisville made an impassioned plea to his classmates, urging them to march in solidarity with Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, Kentucky was no haven for race reformers—it was dominated by some of the same elements of the Democratic Party that vehemently rejected the very notion of civil rights. Nevertheless, this 20-year-old activist called for strong statutes, state and federal, to protect the dignity of minorities. READ MORE >>

In The Clinton Tapes, Taylor Branch’s book of conversations with the former president, Bill Clinton recounts several days in 1999 that constituted “his most ferocious encounter in politics -- bar none.” The encounter was not with Newt Gingrich or Saddam Hussein, but instead Nawaz Sharif, the twice elected prime minister of Pakistan who is set to take office for a third time after a remarkably strong showing in Saturday’s vote. READ MORE >>

There is a new Iron Man movie opening this month, which means we are being subjected to the force of nature that is the Robert Downey Jr. publicity tour. By now, his persona is familiar: debonair, insouciant, and lovably arrogant, in a faintly bemused kind of way. READ MORE >>

Great times call for great men. The cold war era provided Henry Kissinger. We have Robert Kaplan. Where Kissinger was content to oversee the bombing of Cambodia, the pointless extension of the Vietnam War, and the undermining of elected governments, Kaplan has set his sets higher: he wants to justify all these actions, and even celebrate them. READ MORE >>

If Pervez Musharraf exists at all in the American consciousness, it is as a slightly nebulous, vaguely absurd figure from the early years of the War on Terror. Before the Osama Bin Laden raid and regular drone strikes, there was Our Man in Islamabad: relatively liberal (by the standards of dictators), and relatively secular (by the standards of Pakistani dictators). He gave speeches about the evils of terrorism, and was almost assassinated by suicide bombers. READ MORE >>

In one of the news media’s many embarrassing moments from this past week, CNN’s John King, who went on to incorrectly report that the authorities had someone in custody on Wednesday, initially stated that the suspect was a “dark-skinned male.” King was rightly ridiculed on the internet for his errors, and especially for his comment about skin color. READ MORE >>

Wendy Moore’s excellent new book, How to Create the Perfect Wife, joins a long list of “How To” texts that fail to divulge the secrets promised by their titles. (How to have a “One Hour Orgasm,” how to ensure “A Great Day Everyday,” etc.). READ MORE >>

Last week, on the second night of his new MSNBC show, "All In," Chris Hayes began the program with a discussion of Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor and perennial punch line. Sanford had just won a Republican congressional primary: A very conservative constituency, opposed to gay marriage, had put its hopes in the man who had disappeared during his gubernatorial term to conduct an affair in Argentina. And now he would face Stephen Colbert's sister in a general election. READ MORE >>

Margaret Thatcher's crucial foreign policy achievement, at least according to much of the American media's coverage of the former British prime minister's death Monday at 87, was to cement a strong alliance with Ronald Reagan in the final decade of the Cold War. Not since Winston Churchill and FDR joined forces against fascism has Anglo-American unity ... the sentence practically writes itself. READ MORE >>