The New Republic

Free Larry Summers: Why The White House Needs To Unleash Him, by Noam Scheiber Killer Peanuts! Toxic Melons! Deadly Tomatoes! Why Obama And Congress Are Not Doing Enough To Keep Our Food Safe, by Steve Nash READ MORE >>

I’ve gotten tired of writing about Chas Freeman, but since he withdrew his candidacy--willingly or otherwise--he’s been busy providing inadvertent justification to his critics. Since Freeman is doing so in the course of lashing out at his critics, myself included, it’s worth pointing out just how off-base he is. 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 >>

Over the past few days, Chas Freeman's liberal defenders have been arguing that it would be valuable to have a contrarian voice in the administration. READ MORE >>

According to a new survey by Trinity College in Connecticut, significantly fewer Americans are identifying themselves as Christian than did in 1990 (down to 76% from 86%). Also striking, 15% of Americans now say they have no religion at all, vs. only 8 percent in 1990.  READ MORE >>

We can take it from some pieces posting by David Frum and Andrew Sullivan that conservatives are in deep trouble if Rush Limbaugh is their leading intellectual light. But dissing Rush as a thinker is all too easy. The difficult question is which conservatives deserve to be called the breakthrough thinkers that the man from talk radio clearly is not. READ MORE >>

Right-wing Catholic intellectuals like to claim that the Vatican's absolute opposition to abortion (and homosexuality, and contraception) is grounded in something called "natural law," a body of moral principles that are accessible to all human beings through both reason and conscience. Because these principles can be known by all of us, regardless of our theological convictions, they are supposed to be binding on all of us. READ MORE >>

James Fallows' case for Chas Freeman is much better than the "anything that's bad for the Israel lobby must be good" rationales I've seen. Yet it still leaves me unconvinced. Fallows argues that Freeman, while not the kind of person you'd want running U.S. foreign policy, is a useful "contrarian" to have around. READ MORE >>

Over at NRO's The Corner, Jonah "Liberals Were Fascists Before They Were Socialists" Goldberg joins with the conservative movement's house comedian Mark Steyn in ridiculing a book he hasn't read -- Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism READ MORE >>

Two distinct conversations on race have dominated this February, the first black history month with a black American president. One consisted of a steady stream of outrage over publication of a cartoon in the New York Post depicting a chimpanzee being shot to death. READ MORE >>