The New Republic

If you’re a journalist, chances are you’ve had some pretty low moments in the last few years, as your industry has imploded all around you. But, in your darkest hours, you were always able to console yourself with one thought: At least I’m not Tucker Carlson. READ MORE >>

But Mrs. Clinton is the designated canary who brings the bad news. Or, rather, the good news... at least to the mullahs. She has now told everyone who will listen that the U.S. has no plans for a military strike against Iran. And, given the 
president's deeply ideological commitment to peaceful engagement with Tehran, there is no reason to doubt her. READ MORE >>

I have to admit that Barack Obama's last speech to the Muslim world—by telewhatever to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar—did contain one subtle reproach to the umma after a year of fawning. And it was an important one although it was only three words: “including their daughters.” The president was ever so gently urging Muslims to include girls and women in the pursuit of knowledge which he right called “the currency of the 21st century.” It is, of course, more than that. But give him his due.   READ MORE >>

Words, forget yourselves. You’re swallowed galaxy-wide--with its quantum bits, its dark dust backdeals by up-or-down thumbthrust. You’re sand- paper tongue to mankind’s new hivemind, the Internet: large-looming electric silk pulled finer & finer across our woken wow. Words, forget yourselves. Yes or no, true or false-- space & time are said & done without you now. CHRISTOPHER PHELPS READ MORE >>

Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court By Jeff Shesol (W.W. Norton, 656 pp., $27.95) READ MORE >>

So the bloom is off the rose. President Obama’s Grant Park oration now seems as antique a moment as Ronald Reagan telling us it was “Morning in America.” As glorious as it felt at the time, it was longer on drama than substance. READ MORE >>

The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in The American University By Louis Menand (W.W. Norton, 174 pp., $24.95) READ MORE >>

--Or Old Man’s Beard. That the names we give recall the thing is what we want. And yet, both names are boring when compared to the way it shimmers there like a firework that somehow doesn’t fall, or the way it will fall eventually from itself, swirling its gauzy pollen in the wind above the lawn where the children next door run outside in late April, swearing to their mother that it’s snowing. And even after they know they’re wrong, they squeal, insisting their mistake is something to dance through, something READ MORE >>

Ajami Kino International The Last New Yorker Brink Films North Face Music Box Films A Palestinian, Scandar Copti, and an Israeli, Yaron Shani, have co-written, co-directed, and co-edited Ajami. This title is the name of a multi-ethnic district in the city of Jaffa, so it fits the film, not merely in facts but in feeling. Copti and Shani knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. READ MORE >>

Traditional Iranian husbands, the sort found in the highest ranks of the Islamic Republic, sometimes refer to their wives as “the house.” For them, this is not just an expression of their understanding of gender relations. It is viewed as a necessary euphemism, vital protection for a woman’s honor. The mere uttering of her name, after all, might compromise her chastity. READ MORE >>