The New Republic

Having recently been dumped by Time, I naturally had great hopes for this week's much-anticipated makeover of Newsweek. Both surviving newsmags (US News is said to exist still in some form, but no one I know has seen it lately) are in an Internet panic like that affecting newspapers. Newsweek has always been a bit faster on its feet. But judging from its first issue, the new Newsweek is not going to be the instrument of my revenge, alas. READ MORE >>

Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property.... —Marx and Engels READ MORE >>

In the mail, a broadside from the Heritage Foundation. Nothing special about that. Like many Washington journalists, I get two or three missives a day from Washington's leading conservative "think tank." They come in a profusion of categories, with somewhat less variety in themes: Heritage Foundation News ("ECONOMIST CALLS CLINTON ECONOMIC PLAN DISHONEST, DECEPTIVE"); Heritage Foundation Backgrounder ("ADVANTAGE INCUMBENTS: CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN FINANCE PROPOSAL."); Issue Bulletin ("SIX REASONS WHY BILL CLINTON'S NATIONAL SERVICE PROGRAM IS A BAD IDEA"); Executive Memorandum ("RUSH! READ MORE >>

It was a black day in 1985 when Dan Rostenkowski was seduced by respectability. I didn't think so at the time. Like other advocates of tax reform, I was delighted when the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee abandoned a lifetime of Chicago machine politics and Washington interest group hackery. His famous "write Rosty" TV address, endorsing reform efforts, won him plaudits for his high-mindedness and bipartisanship from which he apparently has never recovered. READ MORE >>

Ms. Byatt is more annoyed [with] American publishers who insist on changing English idioms and spellings for American audiences. She got off quite easily in "Possession." The lifts and taps stayed. But, she says, her editors at Random House insisted she make her main character … a sexier guy. READ MORE >>

"Why don't I learn? The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle. They're on TV!"—Homer Simpson READ MORE >>

Apparently America cannot be the world's policeman. Political quarrels in foreign lands are none of our business. Apparently our nation is "on the verge of catastrophic decay" because we've been ignoring the problems of the poor. Major new government initiatives are called for. These are not sentiments culled from the 1972 McGovern campaign or the speeches of Hubert Humphrey. These are "new ideas" being trumpeted by America's triumphant conservatives. To which the proper response is an exasperated, "Now they tell us!" READ MORE >>

Although I have no special desire to be governor of Texas, and would actively prefer not to become head of the Office of Thrift Supervision (the poor soul charged with cleaning up the savings and loan mess), the traumas of aspirants to these posts in recent days compel me to make the following statement. It has been cleared with political consultants of both parties. Like many members of my generation—Senator Al Gore and Representative Newt Gingrich, to name but two—I too have experimented with marijuana in the distant past. READ MORE >>

Around the world, national theologies are crumbling: communism, apartheid, and, here in America, the worship of guns—to foreigners, the single craziest thing about us. Do you sense an outbreak of sanity about gun control? I do. There was retired Chief Justice Warren Burger preaching sacrilege on the cover of Parade magazine a couple of weeks ago. READ MORE >>

1. LONG TO REIGN OVER US READ MORE >>