Senator Kennedy died early this morning at the age of 77. Here, some excerpts from his 1980 speech to the Democratic Convention, in which he conceded defeat to Jimmy Carter . The speech is incredibly rich; it is about economic justice as the center of the progressive movement, and about cities as the center of the American economy and culture. (It was delivered in New York.) It touches on the history of American liberalism, and how its successes have been co-opted, in generation after generation, by the conservatives who initially opposed progress: The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political Party in this republic and the longest lasting political Party on this planet. Our cause has been, since the days of Thomas Jefferson , the cause of the common man and the common woman. Our commitment has been, since the days...

One of the great things about being a magazine writer is that it allows you to develop quirky areas of expertise. And indeed, as regular readers will know, I've been covering the HIV/circumcision story on and off for over two years, since I first wrote for In These Times about Mayor Bloomberg 's attempt to encourage circumcision among gay men of color in New York. (Incidentally, that article was my first for editor Phoebe Connelly . A few months later, we both joined the Prospect .) With the Times reporting this week that the CDC is considering recommending routine circumcision of American infants, the issue is gaining wider media pick-up. My boyfriend reports that he saw talking heads debating the topic on MSNBC. And this morning, I was a guest on the BBC/ Times NPR show " The Takeaway ," alongside Dr. Roy Gulick , chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medical College. You can listen to the segment, which is about 10 minutes long, here . It's a good...