The New Republic

IT WAS A cold night in December, and Patrick Murphy was standing in the back room of a downtown Philadelphia bar. As usual, he was telling war stories. It had been nearly two years since Murphy returned from Iraq, where he served as a JAG officer in the 82nd Airborne, but the memories of his time there were still fresh, and, as he mingled about the room, he shared them with many of those he met. He told of leading convoys through a section of Baghdad called “Ambush Alley” and of prosecuting cases before Iraq’s Central Criminal Court. “When I was in Iraq,” Murphy would almost invariably say READ MORE >>

It was a cold night in December, and Patrick Murphy was standing in the back room of a downtown Philadelphia bar. As usual, he was telling war stories. It had been nearly two years since Murphy returned from Iraq, where he served as a JAG officer in the 82nd Airborne, but the memories of his time there were still fresh, and, as he mingled about the room, he shared them with many of those he met. He told of leading convoys through a section of Baghdad called "Ambush Alley" and of prosecuting cases before Iraq's Central READ MORE >>

Late last month, as President Bush's approval ratings hovered near an all-time low and the number of Iraq war dead continued to rise, the singer- songwriter Conor Oberst came to Washington to perform at Constitution Hall. Depending on which music critic you ask, Oberst is "the next Bob Dylan," "the new Bob Dylan," "the indie rock Bob Dylan," "the Bob Dylan of Generation Y," or "Dylan for the prescription drug generation." The 25-year-old has been eliciting plaudits ever since he was a precocious teenager in Omaha, READ MORE >>

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From the imposing neoclassical building Thomas Jefferson designed as Virginia's state capitol to the elegant gray-stuccoed mansion Jefferson Davis used as the Confederate White House, Richmond is filled with impressive monuments to political power. Richmond City Hall, however, is not one of them. An ugly and architecturally undistinguished 17-story office tower built in the early '70s, City Hall went from eyesore to public safety hazard about ten years ago when it started shedding its white marble skin onto the sidewalk READ MORE >>

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The best parts of the early rounds of the NCAA men's college basketball tournament, which begins today, are the upsets, as a few low-seeded teams inevitably knock off some high-seeded ones. Like most college basketball fans, I usually choose as my favorite underdog a scrappy directional school (like fifteenth seed Eastern Kentucky) or an overachieving Ivy (such as thirteenth seed Penn). But this year the underdog I'm most rooting for is a team that, while carrying a ten seed, is a former national champion and typically a national power. READ MORE >>

Christmas came early and often last year for Nancy Grace. In mid-November, a jury in Redwood City, California, found Scott Peterson guilty of the murder of his wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner; then, on December 13, that same jury recommended that Peterson be sentenced to death. Grace, the feisty blonde Court TV anchor who had been covering the Peterson case from virtually the moment Laci Peterson was reported missing nearly two years earlier, could hardly hide her satisfaction with the decisions. READ MORE >>

Harvard University has a long tradition of aggrieved students laying siege to its buildings. In 1969, about 100 students protesting the Vietnam War marched through Harvard Yard and took over University Hall. In 2001, some 50 students agitating for a living wage for university workers stormed Massachusetts Hall and occupied it for nearly a month. Whenever there is a serious protest at Harvard, it seems, there's the threat that a building will be overrun by rampaging students. This week, however, that vaunted tradition was READ MORE >>