Magazine

Bill Clinton’s scandals were supposed to end on Jan. 20. But days after leaving office, he was taking hits for his late-night pardon of financier fugitive Marc Rich, and absconding with White House furniture. Congress was threatening to pull the plug on his plans for a pricey New York office suite, and Wall Street firms […]

On a Friday afternoon late last year, press secretaries from every recent administration gathered in the Ward Room of the White House at the invitation of Ari Fleischer, press secretary to President Bush. There was no agenda. It was just one of those unexpectedly nice things that seemed to transpire during the brief period after […]

As a result, America’s education debate is as surreal as it is hypocritical. Our nation’s leaders speak and act as though the future of American education will be determined in Washington, and routinely promise to make education reform one of their major priorities in office. Yet the actual role of the federal government in education […]

Blumenfeld’s search for the assailant is the core narrative behind Revenge: A Story of Hope, but the detective story is only one part of this meandering, intermittently fascinating book. For Blumenfeld isn’t interested merely in finding the terrorist who fired the bullet; she has an equally obsessive need to understand her own motivations, and to […]

Initially, the church said it would remove the street and build a landscaped park that would “bring a little bit of Paris to Salt Lake,” complete with reflecting pool. The city planning commission approved the deal on condition that the new plaza be regulated as a public park. But the city council signed off on […]

Burma might not triumph in an audition for the Axis of Evil, but it could at least serve as an understudy. The fractious and desperately poor Southeast Asian country is run by a militarist government every bit as tyrannical and insane as the regimes that rule Iraq and North Korea. Throughout the tropical nation, world-class […]

When these binders arrive loaded with genetic information, young men and women, often recent chemistry or biology PhDs, examine them against the PTO’s requirements. The examiners initially reject most submissions but subsequently accept about half after the applicant makes suggested revisions. If approved, the submitting company gets 17 to 20 years of monopoly rights to […]

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at NIH is just one way that alternative medicine enthusiasts are using the federal government to gain respect and funding. Another card they’ve been happy to play recently is that old Washington stand-by: the commission. In March 2000, after intense lobbying from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a […]

Colon’s 10-minute address to the U.S. House of Representatives Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment last July marked the end of a long, painful journey. Colon, along with countless others, has been fighting for accountability in the use of federal AIDS funds. For him, that fight is deeply personal. Colon is living with AIDS; his […]

There is at least a small way in which every person who read Patrick Buchanan’s memoir Right From the Start, regardless of political persuasion, regrets that Buchanan has never become president. In that book, Buchanan, with oblivious candor, proudly explains how he brawled his way through his Catholic Washington, D.C., boyhood, up to and including […]