The New Republic

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This just went out: March 9, 2007 Marty Ryan Executive Producer Fox News Political Programs 202-824-XXXX (fax) 400 N Capitol Street NW, Suite 550 Washington DC 20001 DELIVERED VIA FAX AND EMAIL Dear Marty, READ MORE >>

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Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge By Jerry Gershenhorn (University of Nevada Press, 338 pp., $65)  READ MORE >>

George W. Bush and John Kerry probably differ more on energy policy than on any major issue except abortion, yet news organizations have said barely a word about their positions. Energy policy ought to be a limelight issue this election year. Congress has not passed an energy bill in more than a decade. Oil consumption and oil imports continue to rise. Natural gas prices are high and supplies are tight. Average fuel efficiency of new cars is the lowest in 15 years. The United States continues to supplicate to Persian Gulf dictators for petroleum. READ MORE >>

It's not hard to figure out why the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership are wooing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They want the union to lobby for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. And they really want support and endorsements in states like Michigan and Ohio, where the union's members may hold the balance of power in key House and Senate races—and even in the 2004 presidential election. READ MORE >>

Representative Sam Graves surely considers himself important to the Bush administration. A Republican freshman from the Kansas City, Missouri, area, Graves has been a good conservative soldier during his first year in the House. And, given that he was elected with just 51 percent of the vote and is considered highly vulnerable this fall, the White House should want to help him. So Graves was presumably nonplussed when the administration singled out one of his few legislative accomplishments for ridicule earlier this month. READ MORE >>

I. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperFlamingo, 546 pp., $26) Barbara Kingsolver is the most successful practitioner of a style in contemporary fiction that might be called Nice Writing. Nice Writing is a violent affability, a deadly sweetness, a fatal gentle touch. But before I start in on Kingsolver's work, I feel I must explain why I feel that I must start in on it. READ MORE >>

President Reagan's inauguration was a landmark in the history of conspicuous consumption. It signaled the total rehabilitation of lavish extravagance after half a century when practices like sipping champagne in a limousine were in mild or severe disrepute. They had to pick the east coast clean to find enough limousines to satisfy the demand from people who had flown in from around the country, often in private planes, to attend more than 100 fancy parties, crowd into restaurants that charge $40 or more for a meal, and lay down their heads in triple-digit hotel rooms. The man from Ridgewell's, Washington's leading caterer, summarized the prevailing philosophy for a Washington Post party reporter: "Rather than shrimp salad, they want the whole shrimp."When I read about people living this way, I often think it would be nice to do the same, and then I think it's unfair that some people can and others can't. Everything's relative, of course, and many might have the same thoughts if, for some reason, my lifestyle were chronicled in the newspapers. To me, these two reactions seem perfectly human and perfectly connected. But to conservatives they are very different. The first thought—I would like to live like that—is called "incentive," and is considered crucial to the proper functioning of a capitalist economy. The second thought—It's unfair that some can and others can't—is called "envy," and is considered a dangerous symptom of that political infection known as "egalitarianism" or, in Irving Kristol's phrase, "infantile liberalism." READ MORE >>