The New Republic

The title is titillating: "The Girls Gone Wild Effect: Out-Of-Control Celebs And Online Sleaze Fuel A New Debate Over Kids And Values." Is this from People? Us Weekly? No, no, it's from Newsweek. The current issue of the ostensible news magazine features Paris Hilton and Britney Spears during a night of partying on the cover--in perhaps the most blatant attempt to pander for newsstand sales since, well, People or Us Weekly. And it's just trash. READ MORE >>

by Alan Wolfe Did the American Enterprise Institute try to "buy" scholars to challenge the findings of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as reported by The Guardian? READ MORE >>

I've seen plenty of news reports lately about how ExxonMobil is trying to burnish its public image by becoming more green-friendly. See this story in today's Financial Times, for example. The company has even promised to stop bankrolling the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has waged a long disinformation campaign by attacking the science on global warming. READ MORE >>

by Michael Kazin READ MORE >>

Via Tapped, I found this fascinating Chicago Reader profile of Obama from 1995, when he was making his first foray into elective politics as a state senate candidate. I highly recommend the whole article, but here's one short bit that quotes the then-34-year-old Obama at length: READ MORE >>

The biggest problem in Washington, of course, is that President Bush's crack team of political appointees doesn't have enough power. Luckily, help is on the way: READ MORE >>

All those people who are worried about the White House's unwillingness to take global warming seriously clearly haven't heard about the READ MORE >>

In the grand scheme of things, the murder of David Rattray last week was no different from the spate of senseless killings that have occurred in South Africa over the past decade. Rattray, a world-famous historian and tour guide in the breathtaking Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands, was shot and killed in his home last Friday. READ MORE >>

by Linda Hirshman READ MORE >>

By now, the Arab Human Development Report produced under the sponsorship of the UN Development Program is an annual event, an unusually liberating and truth-telling event. Already three of them have been issued, and in December a fourth, on the status of women in the Arab world, was released in Yemen. The introduction to the report is a bit of apologetics, exculpating Islam for the grim position of women in the most significant spheres of the Muslim orbit. READ MORE >>