Magazine

Linda Hall Daschle’s prenuptial ethics consultation would be the first of many she has sought over her 17 years as the working wife of a man who is now the most powerful Democrat in Washington. And the ethical questions woven into their marriage have gotten more complex as both Daschles have grown in power and […]

Crazy though Kellner’s argument may sound, it’s not too far off from the one being made in a lawsuit against ReplayTV, a company which, like its better-known competitor TiVo, makes digital video recorders for home use. While these products have been slow to penetrate the market, ReplayTV’s new line of recorders includes a feature that […]

You might think that a politician who found himself in this situation would choose one of two options: Either break the pledge and deal with the inevitable flak, or live with the mistake and sideline his presidential ambitions. But Lieberman did neither–or, rather, both. Publicly he continued to affirm the pledge, if anything even more […]

More than six years ago, in the fall of 1995, Ruth Shalit wrote a 13,000-word piece for The New Republic entitled “Race in the Newsroom—The Washington Post in Black and White.” The piece, written before the feisty scribe was drummed out of TNR for a laundry list of journalistic sins, set out to document “the […]

Sheldon Hackney’s apologia pro vita sua is an elegant, persuasive defense of a judicious approach to the culture wars, but it is also an indispensable study of the press, much of which played useful idiot to the crackpot right’s crusade against what they took to be campus radicalism as they pumped themselves up for the […]

Unfortunately, as Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas argue in their fascinating and extremely useful new book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes, that shouldn’t surprise. The Internet hasn’t really helped global democracy, and it hasn’t built a global civil society either. In some countries, authoritarian governments have even been able to use the Internet to entrench […]

It’s pretty remarkable if a new book about American foreign policy that barely mentions terrorism, much less Osama bin Laden, can stand up after September 11. This one does, brilliantly. Walter Russell Mead, a prolific and engaging writer, has produced a history of American foreign policy turning upon American ideas and practices since the days […]

Over the past several months, Nancy Reagan has quietly been alerting friends and family that the health of her husband Ronald Reagan, the nation’s 40th president, is failing rapidly due to Alzheimer’s. Reagan will turn 92 on Feb. 6, and the signs seem to suggest that he won’t be with us for very much longer. […]

A test of their good faith now confronts Republican congressional leaders. Will they repeal, as they promised Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) they would, the three special-interest provisions that mysteriously crept into the homeland security bill at the last minute? One of the provisions exempts Eli Lilly from lawsuits arising from a […]

Amanda Smith was enjoying a weekend of fishing and camping with her extended family along the banks of the Pecos River in New Mexico on Aug. 19, 2000. Early that morning, a few family members had set out to catch some fish, taking their lanterns with them to the river. But instead of waking to […]