The New Republic

The Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, released yesterday, painted a cautiously optimistic portrait of the state of the nation’s economy. The New York Times, reporting on the Beige Book, heralded a “slow and still fragile recovery” that is “taking hold acros READ MORE >>

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(Department of Energy)  According to the Post, Tuesday's Senate hearing on the ever-increasing risk of nuclear terrorist attack was quite the spectacle: READ MORE >>

It was predictable. That even the faculty, or a large portion of it, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas would have qualms about having the George W. Bush Presidential Library on campus. It was obvious. Now, SMU has not actually been designated as the querulous host. Baylor University in Waco and the University of Texas, not in Austin, God forbid, but Irving are also in the running. Or maybe trying to escape. READ MORE >>

In the long march of the conservative ascendancy, Folk Songs to Bug the Liberals, the 1964 LP by the satirical conservative quartet the Goldwaters, was only a blip. Four Tennessee college students put on "AuH2O" shirts and recorded an album of songs like "Down in Havana," "Barry's Moving In," and "Row Our Own Boat." They dropped out of school to warm up crowds before Goldwater campaign appearances. The record reportedly sold some 200,000 copies. The Goldwaters were never heard from again. I suggest a critical reconsideration. READ MORE >>

You hear a lot of complaining, and rightly so, about Hollywood's tendency to churn out safe, unimaginative pabulum--the remakes, the sequels, the blow-everything-up movies. Less remarked upon is the opposite problem: The studios' inability (or unwillingness) to make B+ movies, competent, mid-sized genre films that are formulaic in the good sense. There was a time when Hollywood excelled at producing such solid but unexceptional fare--Westerns are the classic example--but no longer. READ MORE >>

A few hundred dollars a year. Maybe more than a thousand. Rex Delph really couldn't be certain how much larger his medical bills would be if his employer, the school board of Knox County, Tennessee, decided to swap health insurance plans. All Delph knew was that even a modest increase could end up financially overwhelming him. READ MORE >>

LAREDO, TEXAS Tucked into the backseat of a black Range Rover, the candidate is on the phone with a local reporter. And he is causing trouble. "I want to propose a debate," announces Dan Morales, who careened into this year's Texas governor's race in the final hour of the final day of filing. READ MORE >>

Donald Judd had his share of staunch supporters. But you are likely to meet with skeptical responses if you announce that you are captivated by his magnum opus, a composition consisting of one hundred aluminum boxes that is the linchpin of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Chinati is where the sculptor made a permanent home for the frequently large-scale work that interested him and some of the contemporary artists whom he admired. It has an eccentric, off-the-beaten-track kind of grandeur that rubs some people the wrong way. The austere forms that Judd (who died in 1994) arranged in READ MORE >>

Government-appointed bipartisan commissions have played an important role in recent American politics. The social security commission in the early '80s and the commission on closing military bases in the early '90s both helped resolve thorny issues that legislators, beholden to special interests, couldn't settle on their own. The Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce is supposed to serve the same purpose for the public policy crisis created by the shift of commerce away from local merchants and onto the Internet. READ MORE >>