ehm1212

Paul Waldman wonders if Alaska’s former governor will become the leader of the GOP’s religious wing: If you haven’t yet decided what to get your loved ones for the holidays, your worries may be over: Going Rogue: An American Life, by one Sarah Palin, will be available in bookstores Nov. 17, months ahead of schedule. […]

David Bensman on the rise and fall and rise of the trucking industry: Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, is a marvel of efficiency. More than 7,000 container ships visit its docks annually, most stopping for barely more than a day. New terminal facilities, built on landfill where the river meets the sea, handle 10 million containers […]

Arlie Hochschild on surrogacy in the developing world: The auto-rickshaw driver honks his way through the dusty chaos of Anand, Gujarat, India, swerving around motorbikes, grunting trucks, and ancient large-wheeled bullock-carts packed with bags of fodder. Both sides of the street are lined with plastic trash and small piles of garbage on which untethered cows […]

Tara McKelvey considers how Cold War policy relates to today’s nuclear threats: Throughout his life, George Kennan felt a great love for the Russian people. He was an admirer of Anton Chekhov’s plays and enjoyed taking long walks in the Russian countryside. However, he had no illusions about their despotic leaders. During the Stalinist trials, […]

Nancy Cleeland on the rights of food workers and the more nefarious side of chocolate: On the morning of July 8, a temporary worker in Camden, New Jersey, slipped and fell into an 8-foot-deep vat of liquid chocolate, where he was struck by a large mechanical mixer and killed. His name was Vincent Smith II […]

Matt Yglesias on the Olympics, the environment, and Copenhagen: Barack Obama will fly to Copenhagen at the end of this week for a brief visit. His mission: to plead Chicago’s case to the International Olympic Committee, which is deciding whether the Windy City, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, or Tokyo will get the honor (and questionable […]

Tim Fernholz assures us that we don’t need to break out our flannel — this isn’t 1994: I recently came upon a political artifact from a different time: The 1994 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Issues Book. A Bible-thick collection of rhetoric and talking points, this was the playbook Democratic operatives thought would sway voters during […]

Michelle Goldberg reviews Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide : Reading : Reading Nicholas Kristof‘s New York Times column is rarely fun. Week after week, he tries to humanize the world’s most pressing problems through intrepid, immersive reporting, struggling to make his audience care the way he cares. Like his colleague […]

Paul Starr makes the case for making compromises — within the Democratic Party: As the debate over health reform enters its decisive stage, there is a lot of talk about the need for compromise between Democrats and Republicans. That was a sensible point to make in years past when Republicans offered alternatives for reform to […]

Terence Samuel on the bombastic politicians of South Carolina and the state of the Republican Party: There must be some powerful atmospheric agents shaping the politics of South Carolina. How else can the Palmetto State’s tendency to repeatedly produce odd and bombastic figures be explained? Here, I’m not talking about the increasingly infamous and boorish […]