[Weekend 2e] From The American Prospect, here's the final installment in a four-part series on how progressives and Democrats can close the “identity gap.” Noam Scheiber on the problem with Michael Tomasky's big idea for the Democrats. A review of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. A review of Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to The White House and Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse. An interview with Robert Scheer on his new book, Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton -- and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush (and an excerpt). An interview with Eyal Press, author of Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America. A review of Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America. A new study finds Americans view retirement differently from the rest of the world. Ralf Dahrendorf on the nation state revisited.  From Ethics & International Affairs, a review of International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction; a review of Shaping Race Policies: The United States in Comparative Perspective. From In These Times, an article on Black Men: The crisis continues. From Salon, a review of Tavis Smiley's The Covenant With Black America. From National Review, an article on hip-hop and the military. An article on fruitcake: Why does it get a bad rap? Hispanic immigration has become a big political issue in the US, the latest chapter of an old American story. From Forward, stereotype this! Introducing Ethnic Superheroes. And from TNR, Benny Morris on a close examination of what Mearsheimer and Walt failed to tell us about the "Israel Lobby"

[Weekend] Political economy: A new issue of Post-Autistic Economics Review is out. From India's Economic and Political Weekly, an article on transparency and the natural environment; and an article on economic growth in independent India: Lumbering elephant or running tiger? pdf Brazil struggles to put the brakes on rampant deforestation without throwing tens of thousands of loggers and farmers into poverty. Clive Crook on fixing the world's economy, part 97. Not even a cat to rescue: The International Monetary Fund contemplates its future. A discussion of Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development by Joseph Stiglitz. From Mother Jones, James K. Galbraith on the Predator State: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom... and the U.S. government? Paul Krugman on the crony factory. A review of The Bully of Bentonville and The Wal-Mart Effect. From The Economist, in its taste for risk, the world's leading investment bank, Goldman Sachs, epitomises the modern financial system. From Newsweek, Eleanor Clift interviews Al Gore on global warming. Michael Kinsley on why you don't have to hate oil companies to want an excess-profits tax. How dumb does Big Oil think your are? A new issue of The Geonomist is out. The urban renewal that is now sweeping across America is based on state actions fixing the cost of factors of production below market value, thereby generating super-profits for the private sector. How welfare reform worked: Though successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, welfare reform left key problems unsolved. More on Charles Murray's In Our Hands. What is compassionate conservatism? Marvin Olasky explains. From Parade, is the American Dream still possible? An interview with Michael Albert on Parecon today. A review of 100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them. What a country: If affluent people want a body part and have cash, they can get the organ abroad.  Tim Harford of why you can never buy a decent used car. And his poetry and fascism have been comprehensively scrutinised. Now Ezra Pound’s monetary heresies get a long-overdue audit in The Route of all Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound

[Apr 28] From Open Democracy, Paul Berman's Power and the Idealists and Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads attempt to make sense of what went wrong in the post Cold War world. From India's The Telegraph, Pratap Bhanu Mehta reviews Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence. A review of To Dare and to Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations, from Achilles to Al Qaeda. Joseph Nye on Donald Rumsfeld and soft power. From TNR, here's John Judis: "It's not fashionable to say this, but the Iraq war was about oil". Lament of the Profiteer: Why Halliburton wants the Iraq war to end. From Tikkun, from Jabotinsky to Kadima, a short history of contemporary Israeli politics. From The Nation, an article on the ferment over The Israel Lobby. From The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, touring with Bernard-Henri Lévy is a dizzying experience. From Reason, a review of The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 1995-2005. From Counterpunch, a look at why leftists distrust liberals. An interview with Howard Zinn. Eric Alterman on Bush's other war. Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres think that political parties should open a "blind trust" with the election authorities into which all private donors must deposit their money. John DiIulio on the challenge for faith-based initiatives. And from World, are there still public servants in Washington? Not grasping for power, but ready to give it up? 

[Apr 27] Liberals, Greens, Radicals: The last issue of Impact Press is out, including an editorial, an article on Revealing the Revolutionary King; Adam Finley notices there has always been a strong desire among grown men to bed teenage girls; clear-cutting green activists: The FBI escalates the War on Dissent; and seriously, humans, what's the deal? We used to know how to run a relatively peaceful world. Did our society peak at the end of 1999? From In These Times, an Internal Revenue Service auditor darkens the door of Greenpeace: Is the IRS being used as a political tool? Seeking a solution to climate change, an increasing number of environmentalists are advocating nuclear power (and an op-ed on why the United States should rely more on nuclear power). Here's a Wired scorecard rating the major green groups. More and more and more on Jane Jacobs. A review of Sprawl: A Compact History. Here's the Top 10 Liberal Cities, ranked by Human Events. Solar panels on the roof, hybrid car in the garage, Organic-cotton clothes in the closet: Today's eco-radicals are voting with their dollars. A look at The Ten Worst Corporations of 2005. Hostile Takeover: An article on the corporate control of society and human life. What do anarchists mean by anti-capitalism? A review of Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out. A look at why Pete Seeger is one hot octogenarian. Here's a two-word proposal for solving the immigration crisis in the USA: open borders. A world without borders: The case for international solidarity and the need for a socialist alternative. From TAP, part 3 of a four-part series on how progressives and Democrats can close the “identity gap.” Euston, you don't have lift-off: A group of left-wing pundits and intellectuals wants to save the Left from itself, but why bother? Manifest Destiny: An essay on the American Imperial Myth, Then & Now. And human rights in a developmental context: An article on Jefferson's rights in natural human context

[Apr 26] From The Chicago Tribune, American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor, mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way in Iraq with little protection (a special series). The rebuilding of Iraqi pipeline is a disaster waiting to happen. More on Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. An op-ed on why the US must offer Iran a diplomatic deal. An interview with Michael Rubin, author of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos. Terrorism expert Cerwyn Moore on what turns people, especially women, into suicide bombers. Molly Ivins on pro-Israel nutjobs, and no, it's not anti-Semitic. A review of While They're at War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront. The first chapter from Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government's Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs. Obituary: Jane Jacobs. The Next Green Revolution: How technology is leading environmentalism out of the anti-business, anti-consumer wilderness, and 8 people & trends to watch. From Wired, he invented the Internet (sort of). He became President (almost). Now Al Gore has found his true calling: using the power of technology to save the world. Laurie David and Stephen Schneider, activist and climate scientist, deliberate the state of the planet. Ralph Nader on Gingrich, "futurism" and the abolition of the Office of Technology Assessment. An interview with David Kupelian, author of The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom. An interview with Sasha Abramsky, author of Conned: How Millions of Americans Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House (and an excerpt). The Bible Bench: The message from fundamentalists to state jurists is clear: Judge conservatively, lest ye not be a judge. From National Review, an interview with Ramesh Ponnuru on his new book, The Party of Death (and part 2, and another from mercator.net). And why Caitlin Flanagan drives her readers nuts: More on To Hell With All That

[Apr 25] American politics: Newt Gingrich on the five challenges that America must meet. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on Bush's Thousand Days. Jonathan Alter on what President Bush can learn from FDR. Does the Administration need Donald Rumsfeld? Hendrik Hertzberg wants to know. It should come as no surprise that President Bush is having a problem with vacancies in high-level jobs. The Outsiders: For the Bush team, true change won't come from within. A look at how the GOP lost its way. A review of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine. Joel Klein is searching for a pol with a pulse, and more on Politics Lost. Here's part 2 of a four-part series on how progressives and Democrats can close the “identity gap.” Rich politicians claim to avoid conflicts of interest by financing their own campaigns. But does experience back them up? With the political and ideological extremes bubbling up from the states, is the country destined to balkanize into a patchwork of polar-opposite policies? Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times hasn't exactly been pulling his punches. Jonathan Chait defends McCain's flip-flops. Congress is about to approve a measure that would eliminate the last remaining government policy insuring local oversight on communications companies. David Gordon reviews In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. The absurdity (and consistency) of white denial: What kind of card is race? Islam in the Big House: How radical Muslims took over the American prison system. Not in Kansas: David Remnick on Rahim Esenov, a Turkman of letters who visited New York. Noncitizens have the obligations of citizens--so why not the right to vote? Keeping America Empty: How one small-town conservationist launched today’s anti-immigration movement. A look at how immigration reform is splitting Catholics and the GOP. No bar code: An evangelical Virginia farmer says a revolution against industrial agriculture is just down the road. Vermont's rural poverty is encouraging young people to seek out a better life through the National Guard - and now disproportionate numbers of them are coming home in flag-draped caskets. Military bloggers speak out against more restrictions: Speakers at conference say self-regulation can maintain security. And from NYRB, Mark Tushnet and Ronald Dworkin exchange views on Lincoln, Justice Alito, and Charles Fried

[Apr 24] Jack Goldsmith (Harvard): Democracy, Prudence, Intervention pdf. From ISYP Journal on Science and World Affairs, a series of articles on nuclear weapons and terrorism. Zbigniew Brzezinski on how talk of a U.S. strike on Iran is eerily reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. Attorney Alan Grayson pursues Iraq contractor fraud, using Civil War-era law to go after firms for corruption, but administration won't help. Democracy is an admirable idea. If only everyone could agree on what it means. A review of Oriana Fallaci's The Force of Reason. A review of Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam. A review of God's Terrorists. A review of Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. From Bomb, an interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy. A hundred years ago, a black evangelist in Los Angeles taught his congregants how to speak in tongues, and created America's distinct form of everyday supernaturalism. With its sweeping new antiabortion law, South Dakota has 'dared' the Supreme Court, as one scholar puts it, to overturn Roe. Is this a clever legal strategy, or a reckless affront to the Constitution? From the Claremont Review of Books, a review of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution edited by Edwin Meese, and a review of Freakonomics. More on The Undercover Economist. A review of Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics and Thomas Schelling's Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays. A review of Necropolis: London and its Dead. More on Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism. A review of Martin Gilbert's Churchill and America. British and US scientists are at loggerheads over a plan to work with oil companies in hunting for the Arctic's fossil fuel reserves. Is global warming now a reality? What do scientists know for sure and when are they just guessing? Do we care enough to save what's left? An interview with biologist Camille Parmesan. A review of We Want Food. A review of Desmond Morris' Watching: Encounters with Humans and Other Animals. A review of The Lying Ape. And billed as libido in an atomiser, PT-141 will finally offer women the chance to turn on their sexual desire as and when they need it

[Weekend 2e] Christianity and conservatism: At a time of heightened power for evangelical Christians, old fissures are widening, and new theological and political splits are developing. Jim Wallis, move over: A review of The Irresistible Revolution: Living As an Ordinary Radical. Christianity, the Brand: How Larry Ross took "a bungee jump for God" and helped turn religious public relations into big business. A review of books on religious life. "Martin" has been considering an escort for some time: What would Jesus screw? Paul Johnson says the events which led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday ad 33 were essentially a conflict over freedom of speech. A review of How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature -- Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference and What It Means for Faith Today. Few moments in world history proved to be of greater significance than what transpired in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on Christmas Day in the year 800. More on Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation. By turning that disciplinary Rubik's Cube, you end up with seemingly as many ways to study religion as there are scholars of religion. Sceptical scientists and committed believers have one thing in common: they both desperately want science to unlock the mysteries of religion. Noam Chomsky sounds off on Western intellect, religion and the role of science. Darwin isn't the enemy. Conservatives do no service to their cause by treating him as one. An interview with Bruce Frohnen, editor of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. An interview with conservative comedian Brad Stine, author of Live from Middle America. The Conservative Humanist: Those who are pro-life and pro-family should have no problem being pro-human. Twenty-first century religion and the backlash against women's autonomy: Three recent events that show that women's freedom is imperiled. What if Roe is overturned? Ramesh Ponnuru investigates. And beyond Roe vs Wade, let the debate begin: A pro-choice South Dakotan investigates her home state's decision to prohibit abortion

[Weekend] From Writ, John Dean says if past is prologue, George Bush is becoming an increasingly dangerous president. How can the press contribute to confronting the crisis of 33 more months of Bush? First: recognize it. Armchair Warriors, Exeunt Omnes: Public intellectuals, once supportive of the war, are now quietly exiting the stage they helped set. An interview with Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal. A look at why Americans may never leave Iraq. Diplomatic Terrorism, Nuclear Blackmail: Justin Raimondo on the essence of U.S. foreign policy. The kiss of death? William Kristol praises " The Euston Manifesto". An article on Noam Chomsky and the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fourteen Erroneous Theses. Eric Alterman on the Israel Lobby and AIPAC's Complaint. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the anti-Semitic hoax that refuses to die (and more). Tunku Varadarajan reviews Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence. Desperate for a symbol other than Fight Club's Tyler Durden to help "realign your perceptions" on life? It is the age of discredited institutions and revised history: We need things to believe in, but they'd better be watertight. "I don't know if anybody'll be interested, because boredom is such a hard sell": These are tough times for boredom. From The Black Commentator, a look at how the media uses blacks to chastise blacks. Jeff “The Snowman” Monson is the Ultimate Fighting Anarchist. Solve seven puzzles to answer this question: How did worms become the first environmental activists? Why pay more for fairness? Peter Singer finds out. Making civil justice sane: Philip K. Howard on why judges should stop unreasonable lawsuits before they start. Bratton's 'broken windows': No matter what you've heard, the chief's policing method wastes precious funds. An interview with Jody Heymann, author of Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in the Global Economy. James Surowiecki on the upside and downside of corruption. What books should someone read to learn the basics behind the classical liberal perspective? Football provides a glimpse of how true globalization of labor would work. More on The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. From Slate, economist Tyler Cowen visits New Orleans. A review of Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long. And an interview with journalist Richard Reeves on Reagan, New York and BHL

[Apr 21] From Rolling Stone, a cover story by Sean Wilentz on George W. Bush: Worst President in History? Geoffrey Wheatcroft says Tony Blair is worse than Bush. How is it that antiwar soldiers continue to fight? And what does it really take for an antiwar soldier to resist? More on 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military. A review of My Holy War: Dispatches From the Home Front.  From TAP, here's part 1 of a path-breaking and challenging new study on how progressives and Democrats can close the "identity gap". From Salon, most liberals have celebrated the recent pro-immigration marches. But some leading progressives say illegal immigration hurts American workers. From Lacoochie to Le Sourdsville to Los Angeles, America's national language is under siege. Robert Samuelson says it's all about assimilation--or should be. An article on what immigrants must learn from the black Civil Rights movement. From Seed, here's a graphical look at what we've done and where we're going. State of the Planet 2006: The x-factor in preventing catastrophe will be whether the American public sort of gets it, or really gets it. Earth Day 2006 arrives with some evangelicals making a controversial push for radical environmental legislation. An interview with Roger Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future. Hairspray and refrigerators were destroying the ozone layer until scientists talked and politicians listened. Bionic humanity is coming, but not with the bang of a huge, secret government program of the Steve Austin variety. Survival of the Richest: Why are some people better adapted for making money in the financial markets? Sloan School's Andrew W. Lo explains. Tyler Cowen on neuroeconomics: Why do investors do what they do? From The Mises Institute, an article on Henry George and the Tariff Question. An article on Parecon and the Nature of Reformism. A review of Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation. More on The Undercover Economist. Welcome to the New and Private: Neighborhood: Local government in a world of postmodern pluralism. And an article on the urban imagery of George Orwell

[Apr 20] Potpourri: From Prospect, John Stuart Mill left no systematic legacy; there is no "Millism." But 200 years after his birth, his liberalism is still relevant; Michael Ignatieff wondered if torture under some circumstances might not make us safer. The answer is a firm no; Communism is the only political system to have created its own international brand of comedy. A form of resistance? Even Stalin told some good ones; and desalination has long been a possible answer to the world's water shortages. Can technological advances bring it into the mainstream? Vietnam and the Loss of Cultural Honor: An excerpt from Honor: A History. A split is growing over how militant the upcoming "Day Without Immigrants" should be. From The Independent, an article on the