JACK HITT—Spend, Baby, Spend
In 2009, Mitt was unambiguous about his preference for a Keynesian plan: . . .
View ArticleKEVIN BAKER—John McCain’s Road Map to Eternal War
We wrote about all of the outrageous lies perpetrated by Republican speakers on the second night of the convention. But none of these prevarications—and none of the speakers on the second night of the...
View ArticleSCOTT HORTON—Holder Announces Impunity for Torture-Homicides
There is some long-settled wisdom among Washington politicos: When you have bad news and want to avoid attention, you release it just before a holiday weekend. And when you can hold off long enough to...
View ArticleRAMONA DEMME—Four New Messages: Six Questions for Joshua Cohen
Joshua Cohen’s new story collection, Four New Messages, was published on August 7 to wide and deserved acclaim. The book’s four independent but stylistically and thematically harmonious stories are an...
View ArticleKEVIN BAKER—The Imposed Culture
It is this indulgence that is the story, of course, not Trump himself, who has not been a real story since the early Eighties, when he “made” his first millions developing major publicly owned...
View ArticleSCOTT HORTON—Boss Rove: Six Questions for Craig Unger
After four years in the political penalty box, Karl Rove has returned as the undeniable mastermind of the G.O.P.’s electoral effort. Vanity Fair contributing editor Craig Unger has just published a new...
View ArticleRYANN LIEBENTHAL—Weekly Review
Mitt Romney formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s national convention in Tampa, Florida. “What America needs is jobs,” said Romney. “Lots of jobs.” John Boehner...
View ArticleTREVOR QUIRK—Christopher Hitchens’s Very Personal Handbook on Cancer Etiquette
It is strangely humbling to read the last writings of a dying atheist whose opinions seemed of near-stratospheric condescension, and who stood among a group of modern anticlerics who consider...
View ArticleKEVIN BAKER—The Republican Claim on Hope
It has become holy writ among some of my friends and fellow liberals that Obama’s re-election and an extended period of Democratic dominance have become all but inevitable thanks to “the demographics”...
View ArticleLAMIS OMAR—Regime changes
From emails sent last year, purportedly to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, by Lamis Omar, a Ph.D. student working as his translator. The emails were among hundreds recovered by WikiLeaks and released...
View ArticleKEVIN BAKER—Courting Disappointment in Charlotte
Last night, as Michelle Obama rocked the house, and one speaker after another scored the Republicans and their candidates, all was right with what Karl Rove once belittled as “the reality-based...
View ArticleJACK HITT—Michelle Obama and the DeGeneres Vote
For the last four years, it has been painful watching Democrats struggle to coordinate a single message amid the millions of tiny medialets misting around us. Typically, watching a Democrat on...
View ArticleSCOTT HORTON—CIA Waterboarding, Qaddafi Collaboration Revealed
Just days after Attorney General Holder announced a formal decision of impunity resulting from a probe into 101 documented cases in which CIA agents engaged in acts of torture and abuse in apparent...
View ArticleYUMNA MOHAMED—Samuel James’s Scenes From Nigerian Oil-Refining Communities
“This man is preparing for a night of cooking diesel. The boat behind him contains crude oil that was bunkered from a pipeline close by. Right now it is low tide, revealing oil stains on the roots of...
View ArticleJACK HITT—On Booing God at a Political Convention
For political hacks at modern party conventions, the answer to the Reagan Question—Are you better off than you were four years ago?—should be knee-jerk, no matter the party, no matter the year. This...
View ArticleKEVIN BAKER—The Clinton Show
Speaking deliberately, blithely exerting his executive privilege to ignore the 11 p.m. prime-time deadline, Clinton made his points with grace, humor, and even a hint of poetry. His evisceration of the...
View ArticleSCOTT HORTON—A Stinging Rebuke of the DOJ on Access to Counsel at Gitmo
The Bush Administration originally created special-detention facilities at Guantánamo on the theory that—given the unique historical provenance of the base, which was secured under a lease at the end...
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