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Archive: Sep 2008

Unexpected Consequences from a Mug of Soda

The Bush Justice Department continuously tells us it is beleaguered, under-resourced, and having a hard time battling crime. But sometimes its enthusiasm for a prosecution is just effervescent. The latest…

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Sakharov on Scientific Inquiry and Human Crisis

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The Jackass in Red: Meet the G.O.P.’s most famous convention delegate ever

Gabriel Nathan Schwartz rocketed to national prominence when he was drugged by a hooker and robbed of $50,000 while serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. But Schwartz…

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Public Integrity, Redefined

Last week the public learned through an inspector general’s report about the antics of a group of Bush political appointees in senior positions at the Department of the Interior. One…

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The History We Need

“The future is certain. Only the past is difficult to predict.” So went one of the Soviet era’s most revealing jokes, one of which the Stanford historian and poet Robert…

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Self-Shill: Ashgabat Calling

From my new piece in the October issue of Wallpaper*, on a recent trip to Ashgabat, the political and cultural hub (as it were) of Turkmenistan. The article is not…

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Weekend Read: “We become less alone inside”

In the week since his death, the web has been full of remembrances of David Foster Wallace, tributes both to the person and to his work. Among the most substantive…

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Bush Justice for Sarah Palin and Jack Abramoff

The news today bears witness to the Bush Justice Department and its commitment to public integrity. In Alaska, the McCain campaign turns to desperation measures to block a legislative inquiry—initiated…

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Galbraith on Stock Market Crashes and Stuffed Shirts

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote this in 1954, in his book The Great Crash, and it still rings true today: In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for…

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Palin Using Her Child as Political Prop

A version of this column originally ran in the Providence Journal on September 17, 2008. Sarah Palin never had much hope of getting my vote, but when she told the…

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Pushing Slightly Against the Skin of his World

There’s a short story in John Haskell’s collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock (FSG 2003) called “Glenn Gould in Six Parts.” The story’s ambition seems to be to look at,…

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The Sweet Smell of Success: Coiffed and cutthroat, Sarah Palin gives us the story we’ve been looking for

Gemma Sieff is an assistant editor of Harper’s Magazine. The Republicans have succeeded in pitting VP against P, inverting their ticket to leave McCain, with his cadaverously stiff bearing, and…

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How bad is the economy? Don’t jump, but “We’re going to have to redefine what we mean by normal growth”

The government bails out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt and Merrill Lynch is sold. Stocks are tanking with the Dow Jones down by 22 percent…

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Punditry and Wishful Thinking

I’m taking part in the Online 100, a panel put together by PoliticsHome.com, a terrific website that offers breaking political news and analysis. The Online 100, which is meant to…

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Six Questions for Bart Gellman, Author of Angler

Last June, Bart Gellman’s four-part series in the Washington Post gave us an extraordinary portrait of Dick Cheney, the most powerful vice president in America’s history. The series, called “Angler”–after…

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“Submersion Journalism”: Book Event at New York University on Wednesday

Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper’s Magazine, a collection of fifteen pieces from the magazine, is about to go on sale. One of my stories is…

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Congress Still Taking Money From UBS Despite Multiple Investigations

Speaking of huge contributions to politicians from Wall Street, you’d think members of Congress would by now be reluctant to accept donations from the American subsidiary of Swiss giant UBS.…

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Weekly Review

Stocks on Wall Street and other exchanges throughout the world dropped as brokerage Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, insurance giant AIG sought tens of billions of dollars…

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A Bipartisan Guide to the Financial Collapse: Who’s not taking money from Merrill and Lehman?

“Both the Republicans and Democrats have given the financial services industry everything it wanted. The finance sector has endless amounts of money to influence politics and can outgun the bank…

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A Brecht Premiere

In Jürgen Hillesheim’s recent book on the Augsburg adolescence of Bertolt Brecht, we learn how the quiet but stubborn protagonist came to be expelled from high school. It was 1917…

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From Goethe’s Divan

Glaubst du denn: von Mund zu Ohr Sei ein redlicher Gewinst? Überliefrung, o du Tor, Ist auch wohl ein Hirngespinst! Nun geht erst das Urteil an; Dich vermag aus Glaubensketten…

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Goethe’s Freedom

Hat einer nur so viel Freiheit, um gesund zu leben und sein Gewerbe zu treiben, so hat er genug, und so viel hat leicht ein jeder. Und dann sind wir…

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Weekend Read: “Nature Seems to Exist for the Excellent”

“It is natural to believe in great men,” begins Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Representative Men: Seven Lectures. After the past twenty-four hours of reassuringly well-lit conversations between Charlie Gibson and the…

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Our Blunted Rhetorical Daggers

“Why is civility so essential? Is negativity not one of the conditions of criticism?” The questions come late in “Against Integrity,” Leon Wieseltier’s latest Washington Diarist column from this fortnight’s…

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McCain Strategy: “These Little Facts Don’t Matter”

From today’s Washington Post, which cited Sarah Palin’s repeated claims that she fought the Bridge to Nowhere as an example of “a candidate staying on message even when that message…

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