This week's Newsweek reports on the latest book by Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great. "Religion poisons everything," [Christopher Hitchens] expostulates—from such minor pleasures as a slice of ham (Hitchens's mother and wife were born Jewish), up through sex, and on to the future of life on Earth, whose end…
The Nation argues that we don't really have any real political debates among the candidates. In fact, what passes for "debate" is "idiotic": What passes for a political debate in the United States today is little more than dueling sound bites. The Republican candidates were restricted to sixty-second answers to…
The subtitle of "Protest Songs Rise Again," from the recent edition of Rolling Stone (May 3-17, 2007 issue): "Everyone from Ozzy to Maroon 5 weighs in on the worst president ever." According to this article, rock has now entered "its most politically charged phase since the late Sixties." Tom Morellos's new solo…
Mathematician John Paulos has been working hard to help us imagine the amount of money spent to invade and occupy Iraq. Many experts suggest that it has cost $700 billion in direct costs and probably twice that much if you include the indirect costs. Others estimate the cost at $2…
The Washington Post reports on Obama's willingness to address issues that afflict many African American communities: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are "disenfranchising" themselves because they don't vote, taking rappers…