Welcome Back Taliban!

You'd better sit down. Today Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist suggested that the best way to deal with the increasing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan … is to reintegrate the group into the Afghani government. From the AP via the International Herald-Tribune: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can …

Odds and Ends

Well, it was quite a weekend in Washington D.C. In a previous post, Alex did a fine job of spelling out the facts in the case of ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Predator). The only thing that can be added is that Foley has now headed down a familiar path– as Josh Marshall puts it: “Ahhh, once …

The Memory Hole Goes Green

Having previously suppressed, ignored, and dishonestly redacted scientific reports that proved politically inconvenient, the Bush administration has taken the next logical step. The Environment News Service reports: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own staff, effective October 1. The decision, formally announced Wednesday …

Selling Out

Maile Meloy's second novel, A Family Daughter, is a thickly plotted sequel to her first, Liars and Saints. Like the first book, it's a speedy multigenerational chronicle of the Santerre family—in 336 pages, A Family Daughter covers several decades in the crisis-ridden lives of about a dozen characters. And like Liars and Saints, it displays Meloy's …

One Year Later

Usually when a regular columnist for one of the major news magazines begins to chew through the restraints of received ideas and government press releases, it is, to borrow a phrase from Samuel Johnson, “like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done …

Sleepers Awake!

Editor's note: This is an expanded version of the Q&A that appeared in print.  Desperate times call for productive men: NYC-born rapper Bigg Jus was a ward of the state who helped make Company Flow one of the definitive independent hip-hop groups of the back end of the 20th century, and from there, he never …

Opposites Attract

The man sits on the floor in his cramped Brooklyn apartment, the cleanest surface of which is the freshly Windex-ed table used for cutting and snorting blow. Early-morning light streams through the windows, but he is still in yesterday's clothes, staring off into the distance, wondering just how yesterday so quickly became today. Insistently, an …