The New Republic

What, exactly, is the Quds Force--the paramilitary wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)--doing in Iraq? The Bush administration maintains that the group is trying to destabilize the country, supplying explosives that are being used to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. READ MORE >>

Joe Lieberman is currently on the Senate floor warning that congressional attempts to meddle with the war could lead to "a constitutional crisis" that requires Supreme Court intervention. --Michael Crowley READ MORE >>

Everyone is writing about Russia these days. READ MORE >>

A few days ago, Matt Yglesias wrote the following about global warming: READ MORE >>

Alex Kotlowitz has a great article in today's New York Times Magazine about the plight of foreign women who have been abused by their husbands and are seeking asylum in the United States. Normally, domestic disputes don't register as meeting the U.N. Refugee Convention-which the United States adopted-threshold for refuge. And rightly so; a domestic crime should be handled by a country's local authorities. READ MORE >>

Bruce Bawer is one of our country's foremost cultural critics. Well, he is really not "ours" anymore, as he moved to Scandinavia in 1998. Part of the reason for his relocation was to get away from what he saw as a creeping Christian fundamentalism in the United States, which he rightly loathed as a gay man. READ MORE >>

As Michael Barbaro and Robert Pear are reporting, at a Washington press conference scheduled for 11 a.m., Andy Stern, the president of SEIU, and Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, are supposed to announce they agree on some basic principles for health care reform -- including universal health care by some date, likely 2012. READ MORE >>

by Richard Stern It was 9 degrees below zero when I woke this morning, minus 26 degrees wind chill. Neither of our old, low-mileage cars would start, it was not worth trying to get a cab to an appointment. Two days ago, in the heavy rains of Miami, our Bears were unable to adjust to Peyton Manning's short passes and the fierce, confident runs of a pair of Indianapolis Colts; our boyish quarterback, Rex Grossman, kept tripping over his own feet and under-throwing receivers. READ MORE >>

by David Bromwich"It won't stop us." The subject of Dick Cheney's extraordinary statement a week ago was the administration's resolve to escalate the war in Iraq, and the co-equal effort to trigger a confrontation with Iran. Cheney was saying that he intended to go forward (with Bush and Rice and Gates rounding out the "we") no matter what the challenge or attempts at correction by the Senate and House of Representatives. It was another symptom of a mentality that belongs more to the READ MORE >>

I'm concerned about Government Exhibit 702 in the Scooter Libby trial. The page has been almost entirely blacked out, but toward the top left beneath all that nonsense about Joe and Valerie, if you can parse the handwriting, is this note: "Tom Cruise & Penelope Cruz at his office." I smell a Scientologist conspiracy. --Sacha Zimmerman READ MORE >>