The New Republic

EVERY WEEKDAY, FROM three in the afternoon until seven in the evening, Randi Rhodes delivers her brief against George W. Bush. Much of it is standard anti-Bush fare: He stole the 2000 election, he wrecked the economy, he led the nation into a disastrous war under dishonest pretenses. But sometimes Rhodes takes her critique into less familiar territory. Citing a book titled George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Rhodes alleges that in the 1940s Prescott Bush, the president’s grandfather, sold raw materials to the Third Reich. READ MORE >>

COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA –– WHEN PEOPLE IMAGINE the typical John Edwards supporter, they probably imagine someone like Phil Phunn. As recently as January, Phunn was a Howard Dean man. But then one day last month Phunn wandered into an Edwards event in Iowa and heard the North Carolina senator deliver his now-famous stump speech. He was sold on the spot. “I just identified with him,” Phunn recalls. READ MORE >>

Kirk Lyons doesn't own a pickup truck, but his Toyota Camry sports a Confederate-flag bumper sticker. He flies a real Confederate flag at his home on Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee's birthday. And the flag isn't just a personal cause for Lyons. It's professional. A lawyer here in western North Carolina, Lyons runs the Southern Resource Legal Center (srlc)--a self- described "Civil Rights Law Firm for Confederate Southern Americans" that provides legal representation to people who have been forbidden from READ MORE >>

A roadside sign reading "hurry back to the city of opportunity" is the last thing people see before crossing the railroad tracks and heading out of Hobson City, the oldest black town in Alabama. But the sign is a cruel, if unintended, joke: People seeking opportunity aren't likely to find it in Hobson City. The textile plant is closed, and jobs at the nearby Anniston Army Depot are scarce. Almost one-third of Hobson City's approximately 850 residents live in poverty, and many of the rest aren't doing much READ MORE >>

Reporters and pundits have been quick to pronounce California's recall election "bizarre," "crazy," "loony," and "absurd." But, while these political observers have worn out their thesauruses ridiculing porn-star-turned- gubernatorial-candidate Mary Carey's proposal to tax breast implants and even Governor Gray Davis's Clintonian attempt to paint the recall as part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, they have barely raised an eyebrow at what has to be the California recall race's most freakish development to READ MORE >>

There's still no definitive answer to the question, "What do you give the man who has everything?" But there does appear to be some consensus about what to give the man who has testicular cancer. Which is why last November, after I was diagnosed with the disease, I became the owner of several copies of Lance Armstrong's autobiography, It's Not About the Bike. Armstrong is the poster boy for testicular cancer. He not only survived the disease, he resumed his professional cycling career and has gone on to win a READ MORE >>

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As the Bush administration crows over its military success in Iraq, it still faces one nagging question: Why can't it find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? After all, the Bushies' absolute certainty that Saddam Hussein had a massive arsenal of illegal weapons was the purported number-one reason for taking out the Iraqi dictator in the first place. Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons," President Bush declared last October. On February 5, in a presentation to the U.N. Security READ MORE >>

John Kerry may have rushed to the head of the Democratic presidential pack. But, according to many White House observers, it's the other John--former trial lawyer and current North Carolina Senator John Edwards--whose candidacy keeps Karl Rove awake at night. Which is undoubtedly why President Bush is making such an issue out of medical malpractice lawsuits these days. Although Bush has been an outspoken supporter of tort reform ever since his days as governor of Texas, he seems to have recently developed a READ MORE >>

There was a time when Sharif Ali bin Al Hussein spent many of his days in Baghdad's Al Rihab Palace, home of the Iraqi royal family. And, though Saddam Hussein has since turned the palace into a notorious prison--Iraqis today call the building the "Palace of the End"--Sharif Ali, one of the last surviving members of the royal family, has settled into suitably regal accommodations in London. There, in a five-bedroom, mansion-block flat near Holland Park, surrounded by expensive artwork and silver-framed, sepia-toned READ MORE >>