The New Republic

What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state. But closely linked to this political fight is also an old theological dispute about the nature of Shiism--a dispute that has been roiling Iran for more than a century. READ MORE >>

How do you make a sequel to a blockbuster when the star of your film declines to return for a second go-round? I refer, of course, to Tom Hanks’s hairdo in The Da Vinci Code. Slipshod and plodding though that film was, the mullety muss adorning Hanks’s pate was a source of nearly inexhaustible amusement. READ MORE >>

From “Album of My Germany”   READ MORE >>

You know that proposal in Connecticut, now tabled, that would have forced the Roman Catholic Church to turn over its governance in the state to boards of Catholic laypeople? As Walter Olson points out, some theocons have (surprise surprise!) been using the controversy over the bill to rally the troops:  READ MORE >>

In late October 1987, Barack Obama and Jerry Kellman took a weekend off from their jobs as community organizers in Chicago and traveled to a conference on social justice and the black church at Harvard. During an evening break in the schedule, they strolled around campus in their shirtsleeves, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Two-and-a-half years earlier, Kellman had hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side. Now, Obama had something to tell his friend and mentor. READ MORE >>

IN LATE OCTOBER 1987, Barack Obama and Jerry Kellman took a weekend off from their jobs as community organizers in Chicago and traveled to a conference on social justice and the black church at Harvard. During an evening break in the schedule, they strolled around campus in their shirtsleeves, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Two-and-a-half years earlier, Kellman had hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side. Now, Obama had something to tell his friend and mentor. READ MORE >>

  The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 By Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins, 870 pp., $39.95) READ MORE >>

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Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, a name out of the deep past, had been bishop of Lublin where my parents were born. I heard his name as a child when he became first archbishop and then cardinal of Warsaw. My parents, and my mother especially, had bad memories of Wyszynski with regard to the Jews. Yes, the old Polish thing about the Jews. But, when he was arrested and incarcerated by the Communists, they softened on him, maybe even admired him a bit. His case was quite different from that of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary. READ MORE >>

Monday, October 9 Dear Damon, READ MORE >>