The New Republic

Political conventions, like the one that the Republican Party of Virginia held in Richmond on Saturday, exist for hardcore partisans and speechifying. So it follows that E.W. Jackson, a far-right reverend with a little YouTube cachet, delivered a thundering address on Saturday that won him the party nod for lieutenant governor. READ MORE >>

Politico recently christened all the conservative think tanks, nonprofits, and publications Bill Kristol is involved with “Kristol World.” But “world” doesn’t do it justice: Kristol’s résumé occupies its own universe. His influence ranges from conservative media to foreign policy to academia to economics. To help untangle Kristol’s myriad activities, both past and present, we mapped the influence of the neoconservative mastermind. READ MORE >>

Since news broke Monday that the Justice Department had secretly accessed the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors over a two-month period—likely as a result of its anonymously sourced story on a foiled al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound plane—no watchwords have gotten more READ MORE >>

Earlier this week, the Heritage Foundation released a new report, “The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer,” that confounded nearly everyone who read it. READ MORE >>

Like a shark that has to keep swimming lest it suffocate, Rush Limbaugh must pick fights with people to keep his name alive. So demanding is his job that he sometimes resorts to attacking his own species. The target du jour of Limbaugh’s jabs: Marco Rubio. When he had Rubio on his radio show last month, Limbaugh asked the senator whether going through with immigration reform wasn’t “committing suicide” for Republicans. READ MORE >>

On Tuesday, The Onion published a piece jarringly titled, “Heartbroken Chris Brown Always Thought Rihanna Was Woman He’d Beat To Death.” It’s a riff on "the one that got away" truism—only instead of wistfully saying that he always thought he’d have kids with her, an imagined Chris Brown laments all the abuse he never got to visit upon his ex: “Despite all the ups and downs, I was so sure Rihanna was the one I’d take by the throat one day and fatally READ MORE >>

This past Sunday, the front page of the New York Times Book Review ran a caustic essay by DePaul University professor Rachel Shteir about "poor Chicago." Disguising it as a review of three new volumes about the city's past, Shteir wrote a blistering epitaph for its present and future. She complains about the murder rate, rightly, but also about the weather, a certain baseball team, the cost of parking, and even the sales tax. READ MORE >>

We may not know for some time what caused the West Fertilizer Co. facility in West, Texas, to explode last week, killing 15 and injuring more than 200. But it is already clear that the warehouse, which housed two hazardous chemicals, was a regulatory nightmare. READ MORE >>

A Harvard degree can get you far in life—even if you haven’t actually earned one. It’s a favorite trick of shady businessmen, society poseurs, and outright con artists: Just slip an invented degree onto your résumé, and—voilà!—watch the doors and wallets open. Inevitably, you’ll be caught, like everyone in this rogues’ gallery. So enjoy the ruse while it lasts, and, if anyone asks, remind him of your alma mater’s motto: Veritas! READ MORE >>

Immediately after a pair of explosions wracked the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, those who turned to the city’s two major newsrooms for facts would have found that both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald’s websites were down. Cell phones, which are supposed to provide calm and contact in exactly such an emergency, were failing bystanders, too, with overloaded towers making calls and text nearly impossible to transmit. READ MORE >>