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(ABC News)

Sen. John McCain was critical of President Obama’s foreign policy record this morning on “This Week,” saying that the administration has been “leading from behind” on the issue of Syria and its broader Middle East policy.

“How could we not stand up for these people?  How could we sit by and watch this slaughter go on Exchange Server Key, while the president of the United States is totally silent Windows XP Key,” McCain told Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper on the topic of Syria.

McCain criticized the president’s recent creation of an Atrocities Prevention Board—an executive board designed to monitor and defuse international threats and atrocities through diplomacy and intelligence—as the United States has not directly intervened in Syria.

“Thousands of people being massacred in the streets, and the president — I’m not making this up — goes to the Holocaust Museum, where we said never again, and says that he is setting up an Atrocities Prevention Board,” McCain said.  “I’m not making that up.  Instead of standing up for the people of Syria, who are — who are being massacred and slaughtered, tortured, rape—terrible.”

McCain also criticized the president for his handling of Iraq and his commitment to withdraw Office Visio Key, saying that the country is unraveling while the president “keeps bragging about Iraq.”

“The whole situation is unraveling,” McCain said.  “In the words of General Keane, the architect of the surge, we won the war and are losing the peace, thanks to the president’s commitment to get completely out.”

When asked about a remark from 2007 in which McCain suggested that Mitt Romney was naïve for saying that “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person” in reference to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, McCain offered a defense of the current presidential candidate.

“I think what Mitt was saying also, if you looked at the entire context of his remains, was that bin Laden was part of the overall war on terror and we shouldn’t just focus on that interview,” McCain said.

On the topic of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, McCain said that while there has been some mishandling of the diplomatic crisis, the top priority should be on getting Chen safely to the United States.

“It’s very clear that there were a number of missteps here, having him go to the hospital and then not allowing the American embassy people there, the back-and-forth,” McCain said. “The key now right now is to get him out of there and to the United States, that’s I think what we all ought to focus on.”

McCain avoided responding to Mitt Romney’s comments that the Obama administration may have intervened inappropriately in the diplomatic crisis.

Romney said Thursday that the administration “may have sped up the process” of Chen’s decision to leave the embassy, according to reports, and said that “if the reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama Administration.”

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(Image Credit: Ron Galella/WireImage/Getty Images) replica watches

A forthcoming biography of Washington Post President at Large Ben Bradlee drags readers back into the 40-year-old Watergate controversy, once thought put to bed.

In an excerpt released to New York Magazine, author Jeff Himmelman writes about discovering a two-decade-old interview with Bradlee–the editor who oversaw Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the 70s–in which he questioned the validity of the Deep Throat narrative as well as the story of Woodward and Bernstein’s secret source who used flower pots to arrange meetings.

In 2005, an article in Vanity Fair magazine revealed that former FBI Associate Director William Mark Felt was that secret source. Woodward and Bernstein had said they would wait until after his death to indicate who Deep Throat was, but after the article, Felt, Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all confirmed it.

In this new book, Bradlee’s words seem to indicate he was unconvinced of some of the theatrics behind the Deep Throat saga.

“Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen? … and meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings in the garage … There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight,” Himmelman quotes Bradlee as having said in an interview in 1990.

Himmelman makes it clear Bradlee did not doubt the duo’s overall reporting. Still cheap replica watches, such a question from the very editor who oversaw the reporting chips away at the Hollywood tale that Watergate has become for the field of investigative reporting.

Woodward rejected Bradlee’s doubts and the excerpt of the book published in New York Magazine. He told Politico a more recent 2010 interview shows that Bradlee did have confidence in the story of Deep Throat.

“There’s a transcript of an interview that Himmelman did with Bradlee 18 months ago in which Ben undercuts the [New York magazine] piece. It’s amazing that it’s not in Jeff’s piece replica watches,” Woodward said, according to Politico.

But Bradlee’s wife Sally Quinn offered a statement to the Washington Post from her husband that suggested he would stand by Himmelman’s account of the 1990 interview.

“I love Bob, and I love Jeff, and I trust them both, and let’s move on,” Quinn told the Post reporter on behalf of her husband.

Himmelman has ties to both Woodward and Bradlee. He previously contributed to books written by Woodward and also by Ben Bradlee’s son, Quinn.

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Update: Barry apologized for his comments Thursday evening, saying in a statement that he was “deeply apologetic for any harm I have caused.”

“I am sorry that my choice of words in expressing my discontent with some of the Asian business owners in my Ward offended the Asian American Community,” Barry said, emphasizing the word “some” in his statement.

But he continued his scorn of the Asian-owned businesses in Ward 8 that, he said, “don’t  reach-out to neighborhood groups, make financial contributions to the neighborhood or, help young people in the neighborhood improve their quality of life.”

“It is to these less than stellar Asian American businessmen in Ward 8 that my remarks were directed, not the whole of Asian businessmen in Ward 8 or Tattoo Case Box, the Asian American population,” Barry said in the statement.

Original Post:

Former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry is mired in yet another controversy today after saying Asian business owners “ought to go” to make room for African-Americans to “take their place.”

After winning the Democratic primary election for the District of Colombia city council, on which he has served for the past seven years, Barry seemed to berate the Asian-American business community in his Southeast D.C. district.

“We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said after winning the Democratic Primary for his Ward 8 City Council seat Tuesday night, according to a video posted by NBC 4 in Washington. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

Current D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray said Thursday that he was “deeply disappointed” by Barry’s comment.

“There is no room in this wonderfully diverse city for comments that disparage anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation,” Gray said in a statement. “Our energies are better spent focused on building everyone up rather than tearing anyone down. That is how we achieve the vision of One City.”

While Barry’s office did not immediately respond to ABC’s request for comment, Barry sought to clarify his remarks today on Twitter.

“My comments were taken out of context & construed as disparaging 2 entire Asian biz community. We DO deserve our bizs t/b nice places in W8!” read a tweet from his @marionbarryjr Twitter account Thursday afternoon.

The city councilman then tweeted photos of three businesses Tattoo Machines And Supplies, two of which seemed to be run by Asians, saying “WE can do a better job.”

“I do NOT disparage the Asian community, but the fact is there r some bizs that can do better!” Barry wrote.

“But the plexiglass barrier is both literal & figurative. Keep bizs clean, carry healthy products, hire from community,” read another tweet accompanied by a photo of what seems to be a Chinese food restaurant front with plexiglass enclosing the storefront.

Ward 8, which Barry represents, is not only the poorest neighborhood in the District of Columbia — 35 percent of its population lives in poverty — but with 25 percent of the population unemployed, it has the highest unemployment rate of any comparably sized city in the country. The average income of the area is one third that of the D.C. as a whole, according to Census data from 2005-2009 analyzed by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

Barry, 76, is a veteran of D.C. politics, having served as mayor for nearly 20 years. In 1990 he was caught on tape in an FBI sting using crack cocaine in a hotel room with a former girlfriend working as an informant. A jury deadlocked on many of the counts against the popular Barry during his trial; he was convicted of an earlier charge of possession and served six months in prison. Stunningly, he ran and was elected mayor for a fourth term in 1994.

He was arrested again in 2002 after traces of marijuana and cocaine were reportedly found in his car Intenze Tattoo Ink, although no charges were filed.

The former mayor has also been charged with failing to pay federal and local taxes and “misdemeanor stalking” for allegedly following his ex-girlfriend.

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2012 (Reuters) — Jean Coyle, 67, has a new kind of ministry. Jobseekers stand in line to attend the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. career fair held by the New York State department of Labor in New York April 12, 2012. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

The former professor had just begun a career as a Presbyterian minister in Virginia when the economic downturn forced her church to let her go in 2007. After that, she found only temporary work.

She relied on savings while job hunting Tattoo power supplies, but at 64, had to dip into her Social Security benefits. She officially retired in 2010. For spending money, she plans to start teaching a water aerobics class to earn $40 a week.

“I’m not going to get wealthy on that,” she said. “It’s not really the ministry I expected to have.”

Coyle is among the many unemployed, older Americans who, while struggling to reenter the workforce, have growing worries that their retirement security is at risk.

The number of long-term unemployed workers aged 55 and older has more than doubled since the recession began in late 2007, and getting back to work is increasingly difficult, according to a government report being released on Tuesday.

For unemployed seniors Tattoo Case Box, the chances of reentering the workforce are grim.

Experts worry that unemployed seniors face a long-term threat as the impact of lost wages compounds.

In what should there be prime earning years, these older workers rely on savings, miss out on potential wages and prematurely tap into Social Security – all at a time when Americans live longer and health care and other living costs are rising.

About 55 percent of jobless seniors, or 1.1 million, have been unemployed for more than six months, up from 23 percent, or less than 200,000, four years earlier, according to a copy of the Government Accountability Office report obtained by Reuters.

The GAO, a non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, also found that years of lost work significantly reduced retirement income, particularly for those with defined contribution retirement plans.

Overall, older workers fare better than their younger counterparts, with a lower unemployment rate and less risk of losing jobs, the GAO found, even as it highlighted the struggles of jobless seniors.

“Long-term unemployment has particularly serious implications for older Americans,” the GAO said in its report to the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Those seniors who continue looking for work amid a tepid economic recovery confront competition from younger, cheaper workers. They also must keep pace with ever-changing technology.

Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the Special Committee on Aging who is to lead a hearing on the issue on Tuesday, is investigating ways to counter age discrimination and boost seniors’ job prospects.

“These are the people we should be most worried about,” he said. “With the aging of the baby-boom generation, the fact is that older workers will continue to make up a much larger share of our country’s labor force.”

LOST WAGES, LESS SAVINGS

A flurry of recent reports have raised fresh concerns about the ability of some older Americans to support themselves in retirement.

More seniors with jobs expect to work longer, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, and just 14 percent say they believe they can retire comfortably.

The GAO assessed the impact of job loss and forced early retirement on older workers’ income. It showed a significant impact on income in later years.

It found those who had been part of a 401(k) or other similar employer-sponsored defined contribution pension plan stood to lose more of their expected retirement income than those who had defined benefit pension plans or relied solely on Social Security, the nation’s benefit program for retirees.

For example: an individual with a defined contribution plan who stops working at age 55 instead of age 62 would see a 39 percent drop in median-level retirement income, from $817 per month to $500 per month, according to the GAO, which did not take other retirement income sources into account.

At the same time, a similar worker would see a 13 percent drop in median Social Security retirement benefits from $1,467 to $1,273 a month.

The impact on workers with employer plans is greater because they can generally save more for retirement and typically have higher wages that also result in higher Social Security benefits, GAO said.

“These workers also have the most retirement income to lose by becoming unemployed Tattoo Ink Kits,” it said.

A worker relying only on Social Security may see $30 to $60 less each month but face harsh consequences, GAO researchers said, because they have less savings to provide a cushion and may be laid off before they can claim the government benefit at age 62.

ONLINE STRUGGLES

Laid-off workers and other experts gave many reasons that employers appeared reluctant to hire seniors.

Refusing to hire someone because of age is illegal, but GAO experts found potential discrimination still lingers.

Often employers assume that older workers used to earning more money or having a higher-level job would not stay long in an inferior position, according to the GAO’s interviews. Higher health care costs are also an issue.

The GAO, which talked to seniors in Maryland, Virginia, California and Missouri, also chronicled the toll of long-term unemployment. Self-esteem took a beating, and it became increasingly hard to sustain job searches, they said. Some fretted not just about their own bills but about the obligations of college-age or unemployed children.

At the AARP, the lobbying group for 36 million older Americans, legislative policy director David Certner said certain older worker groups – such as women and minorities – are particularly at risk of poverty given “this really incredible perfect storm” with low savings rates, shrinking pensions, lower home values and longer lives.

It is unclear what action Congress will take, particularly in an election year ripe with political gridlock.

Some lawmakers want to strengthen discrimination laws while others want legislation to prevent employers from screening out unemployed workers.

Coyle, who starts her part-time job next month, understands how a younger minister might have a better chance landing a full-time job. But she remains hopeful that she will find a place to preach again.

“I used to tell my gerontology students if you know your date of death you could plan very well,” she said, “but I really want to be useful. It’s not just a money issue.”

(Editing by Leslie Adler)

Though demand for Nokia’s new Lumia smartphones has been spotty across the globe, the Lumia 900 continues to sell reasonably well in the U.S. Retail checks conducted by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt suggest that the device is the second-best-selling device at most AT&T stores, after the iPhone.

Encouraging news for Nokia, which was recently sued — stupidly — by an irate shareholder over disappointing Lumia sales. Indeed, it’s McCourt’s impression that demand for the Lumia in the States is still quite good.

“Our conversations with store reps indicated no signs of Lumia demand ‘falling off a cliff’ following the reasonably strong launch week,” McCourt says. “Clearly, at $99 and with very noticeable retail store support from AT&T reps, the Lumia launch in the U.S. was built for volume.”

Certainly, Nokia sounds pleased with the device’s performance in the U.S. In an interview with PC Magazine earlier this week, the company’s U.S. president, Chris Weber Replica Hale Bob Dresses, reiterated earlier claims that Nokia is selling Lumias as fast as it can make them.

“Demand has been outstripping supply for the first couple of weeks, and we’ve been working hard to rectify that,” Weber said. “The demand for cyan [phones] is significantly outpacing supply.”

Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case abroad. When Nokia last reported earnings Marc Jacobs Dresses sale, CEO Stephen Elop said that establishing momentum for the Lumia in Europe has been “challenging.” And according to Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu, that remains true today.

“Consumer interest in Nokia’s flagship peaked at very low levels and is now evaporating in European markets,” Ferragu said in a Wednesday note to clients. “The US remains for now an exception.”

Read more about Wall Street’s ongoing crisis. 

Henry Paulson

Does the Constitution have any role in the intense debate and blowback surrounding Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion bailout proposal? There is nothing in our founding document that prohibits taxing Peter (us) to pay Paul (Wall Street). There are constitutional principles, however, that speak to values such as oversight and transparency. Our system of checks and balances abhors a blank check.

And yet Secretary Paulson’s proposal contains a sweeping provision that utterly strips the courts of any power to review his decisions. Section 8 of the Paulson proposal reads: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion Tattoo Supplies, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

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In contrast, an alternative bailout bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, has a very different clause. The Dodd proposal reads: “Any determination by the Secretary with regard to any particular troubled asset pursuant to this Act … shall not be set aside unless such determination is found to be arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not in accordance with the law.” In other words, the Treasury secretary’s determinations can be challenged on legal grounds. The Dodd version goes on to recite that “the terms of a residential mortgage loan that is part of any purchase by the Secretary under this Act shall remain subject to all claims and defenses that would otherwise apply notwithstanding the exercise of authority by the Secretary or Corporation under this Act.”

How do these two alternatives stack up, constitutionally speaking? In Paulson’s defense, there is no absolute constitutional prohibition on so-called “court-stripping” laws—provisions that bar judicial review of decisions by executive-branch officials. To the contrary, there is explicit language in the text of the Constitution that appears to grant Congress authority to control the jurisdiction of federal courts. The Constitution’s Exceptions Clause describes the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, with the trailing language, “with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” And the lower federal courts are entirely creatures of Congress: The Constitution only created the Supreme Court, leaving to the legislature the option to create lower courts as it deemed wise. The greater power to bring lower federal courts into existence implies the lesser power to place limits on the scope of cases they may hear. Finally, the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law the supreme law of the land, trumping state laws, presumably gives Congress the power to insulate from state-court scrutiny the actions of federal officials who are enforcing laws passed by Congress.

It’s relatively rare for Congress to pass laws stripping courts of all power to review actions of administrative agencies. But it does happen from time to time, and courts have upheld some of these laws. On the other hand, courts are especially skeptical of laws that preclude judicial review of claimed violations of constitutional rights. For example, the Supreme Court’s decision this summer involving the Guantanamo Bay detainees Tattoo Supplies, Boumediene v. Bush, held that the Bush administration’s effort to deny the detainees access to federal court by taking away their right to the writ of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. In Boumediene, the court could rely on specific language in the Constitution’s Suspension Clause, which forbids suspension of the writ except when “in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

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The Rolling Stone drug piece

If I were maximum dictator, I would force every newspaper editor, every magazine editor, and every television producer in the land to read Ben Wallace-Wells’ 15,000-word article in the new (Dec. 13) issue of Rolling Stone, titled “How America Lost the War on Drugs.”

Wallace-Wells captures the complete costs of the drug war better than any journalist I’ve read in a long time. He documents how the federal government has dropped about $500 billion combating illicit drugs over the past 35 years. Nearly 500 Buy Karen Millen Dresses,000 people sit in jail or prison for drug crimes, “a twelvefold increase since 1980,” Wallace-Wells writes. For all the money the government has spent and all the people it’s jailed Discount Marc Jacobs Dresses, it’s still failed to make a long-term impact on the availability of drugs. The militarized drug-control techniques favored by the Bush administration, he reports, have increased violence and political corruption abroad, violated human rights, and destabilized several Latin American nations.

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Wallace-Wells’ accomplishment, while formidable, didn’t require the back-channel confidential sources that Bob Woodward relies on or the mildewed library stacks of obscure documents that made up I.F. Stone’s arsenal. Wallace-Wells gets the story and gets it well by approaching the much pawed-over topic with an open mind and a smart set of questions. Like an auditor called in to assess the wreck of a Fortune 500 company Buy Herve Leger gown, he asks what the government has gotten for the half-trillion dollars it has spent on the drug war and takes the question to the limits.

There is no reason that this project couldn’t have been conceived and executed by any newspaper in America. No reason except that too many editors, most of whom have indulged in illicit substances Cheap DKNY Clothing, fear the consequences of telling their readers the truth about drugs (canceled subscriptions, invective from Limbaugh and O’Reilly, loss of respect at the country club or university club).

Wallace-Wells believes that a heavily subsidized drug-treatment program Buy Chloe Dresses, think-tanked to the top of the Clinton administration’s policy pile, could have reduced crime and drug use if Newt Gingrich and the Republicans hadn’t taken complete control of Congress. We’ll never know. He writes that Clinton acquiesced to the Republicans because he didn’t want to appear soft on crime or drugs, letting Clinton off too easy in the process unless, of course, Newt put a gun to Clinton’s head and forced him to appoint the tyrannical Barry McCaffrey to the drug czar throne in 1996.

Wallace-Wells’ skillful illustration of the international repercussions of the repressive Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush war on drugs, which threatens to turn Peru and Mexico into narco-states, inspired me to revisit economist David R. Henderson’s findings on the effects of stringent drug control. In a working paper circulated in the late 1970s and finally in a 1991 paper published in the University of California-Davis Law Review (1991. 24: 655-676) titled “A Humane Economist’s Case for Drug Legalization,” Henderson shows how increased penalties never have the effects on drug markets predicted by governments.

Henderson looks at drug markets as rational, which they are, and writes that increased drug penalties tend to drive “more civilized dealers” out of the market and reduce supply. “Competition by buyers for a lessened supply must cause the price to rise,” he writes, and as “the price rises, profits will increase and in the long run eventually will return to their precriminalization levels.” As the civilized dealers exit, the most vicious dealers rise. He continues:

Profits of dealers will look higher than normal because the cost of imprisonment, fines, and bribes is not subtracted. Also Marc Jacobs Dresses sale, profits of successful dealers who are never caught will be higher than normal, just as profits of lottery winners are higher than normal. Looking only at the profits of dealers who successfully avoid capture, however, and concluding on that basis that the illegal drug business is abnormally profitable is like looking at the fortunes of only lottery winners and concluding that buying a lottery ticket is abnormally profitable.

Henderson’s insights help explain the phenomenal violence of the cocaine trade described by the Rolling Stone piece. A DEA veteran explains that in the 1970s, “swashbuckling entrepreneurs” with small planes smuggled drugs into the United States through the Caribbean—”guys who wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Jimmy Buffett concert.” Increased militarization of drug interdiction by the United States failed to eliminate drugs—it only moved their staging grounds to other Latin countries and enlisted more ruthless drug entrepreneurs, such as Pablo Escobar.

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2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee – Click above for high-res gallery

JeepGarage.org was the first to get spy shots of the 2011 Jeep Cherokee out testing, and now it’s apparently come through with exhaustive – perhaps complete – pricing of Jeep’s ‘I’m bringing sexy back’ SUV. According to the documents Buy Christian Audigier Clothes, the all-new Cherokee will start at $31,480 (including destination charges) for the base Laredo “E” 4×2, climbing to $45,770 for the Overland-trim 4×4. For comparison’s sake Buy Marc Jacobs Dresses, the outgoing 2010 model starts at $31,490 including freight, leaving a Hamilton left over to top off the gas tank.

In addition to the new paints and packages, there are 46 new standard and optional features. Some of them are unequivocally true and new, like including two transfer cases, Adaptive Speed Control, a larger fuel tank, dual-pane sunroof, bi-Xenon headlamps, and of course Discount Herve Leger gown, illuminated cupholders. Others, like the “Best-in-class premium interior” we’re going to have to see to validate.

On top of that are eight pre-packaged trim groups: Electronic Infotainment System, Luxury II, Off Road I & II, Popular Equipment Group, Technology Group, Trailer Tow, and Trailer Tow IV. Naturally, they can’t be had across the model range, and a couple of them have intriguing requirements, like the Luxury II which can only be fitted to the Limited models that have the black/light frost beige interior. The new model will finally go on sale later this year Buy DKNY Dresses, and the way it’s looking Discount DKNY Clothing, this Cherokee might just fulfill the promise of its reveal Replica Chloe Dresses, and its maker.

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[Source: Jeep Garage]

Click above for high-res gallery of the 2009 Honda Ridgeline

All we have to go on are the images and information posted on Carscoop, but it appears the redesigned 2009 Honda Ridgeline is stepping out a bit early to what may be disinterested public. The Ridgeline for ‘09 gets Honda’s new grille that first appeared on the ‘09 Pilot CUV, along with a new front bumper, headlights and all that jazz in the rear. The interior, while not all-new Buy White Herve leger, gets major upgrades like a new steering wheel, gauges, and HVAC controls, as well as a Bluetooth HandsFreeLink Discount Marc Jacobs Dresses, satellite navigation Discount Herve leger strapless, a 115-volt power outlet and requisite jacks for the iPod and other MP3 players. According to Carscoop, Honda has largely left the Ridgeline’s 3.5L VTEC V6 the same except for a new camshaft profile and better breathing practices that net a 3 horsepower bump to 250 at 5,700 RPM and a torque increase of 2 lb-ft to 247 at 4,000 RPM. New ratios in the 5-speed automatic transmission are said to take advantage of the new torque and improve acceleration.

We admit that Honda was smart not to dive head first into the full-size truck market in the U.S. like Toyota did with the Tundra Buy White Herve leger, but the Ridgeline with its V6 and unit body has never enjoyed hot sales. It’s both terrifically ugly and ill-suited for those super hard core tasks that, while rare Herve Leger sale, require a real rig. Nevertheless Christian Audigier Clothes sale, this is Honda, a brand that really doesn’t care what we think about its trucklet and will continue tweaking and perfecting it until we change our minds. Looks like that won’t happen in 2009, though we’re told to expect it in dealers as early as this September.

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[Source: Carscoop]

New Republic, March 5 Jeffrey Rosen visits Guantanamo Bay, where he witnesses nothing but courtesy and professionalism: “Each cell had a Koran, a green exercise mat, and a black arrow pointing toward Mecca.” He had heard rumors that he would see a white-washed version of things: “They’ll show you the accused in a La-Z-Boy sharing fries with the investigator,” one colonel predicted. On reflection, “it’s hard to say whether it was a Potemkin tour,” Rosen writes. But the visit convinced him that Guantanamo’s most pressing problems involve how prisoners get there in the first place and, potentially, negotiate their own release. … A piece by Slate contributor David Greenberg argues that Scooter Libby should go free. Greenberg acknowledges that “on a cosmic level,” the White House deserves punishment for revealing a CIA officer’s identity. But liberals are “supposed to be champions of the First Amendment and foes of overzealous prosecutors. … [W]e should have protested this overwrought case from the start.”— C.B.

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Time, March 5 A cover piece probes the year-old resurgence of Sunni-Shiite enmity in Iraq. Traditionally, “Shi’ites see themselves as the oppressed, and they see Sunnis as the oppressors,” but adherents of the different sects managed to forge friendly bonds during Saddam Hussein’s rule. Now, the hatred “permeates not only the rancorous political discourse of Baghdad’s Green Zone but also ordinary conversations in homes and marketplaces.” The author identifies some flashpoints: The January 2005 elections forced Sunnis and Shiites to take sides for control of the government, and Saddam’s execution on a Sunni holy day angered “[e]ven Sunnis who had little sympathy for Saddam.”… A piece highlights the efforts of wealthy entrepreneurs leading a “renaissance period of space exploration.” Virgin head Richard Branson, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and Budget Suites of America’s Robert Bigelow are nudging spaceflight to the private sector Replica Swiss Movement Watches, undermining outer space’s status as “untouchable, a museum open only to select government employees.” Ventures include Branson’s plan to offer two-hour space excursions for $200,000. The first hundred tickets for it have already been sold.— P.G.

Economist, Feb. 24 An editorial argues that the Bush presidency is still salvageable. Although many Democrats would rather see nothing accomplished in the next two years, the editors urge cooperation between the White House and Congress. A compromise on funding No Child Left Behind, for example, would be a major step forward. Plus, growing support for climate change has made new legislation inevitable. Rather than veto it, Bush should “help draft a milder version now, improve his party’s reputation on green issues and just possibly lure India and China into a global arrangement. How that would change the Toxic Texan’s legacy.”… A piece encourages India and Pakistan to speed up their peace process in light of the recent train bombing. Both governments reacted maturely to the tragedy, but they should go further by sharing intelligence. “[I]t is difficult to change the habits of a lifetime and each country’s spies have spent theirs guarding and conspiring against the other’s. Now, however, is the time to try.”— C.B.

New York Replica U Boat Watches, Feb. 26
A piece in the special fashion issue explores the growing issue of shrinking fashion models. The author argues that smaller clothes sizes are connected to the diminished status of the models themselves. Replacing the magazine-cover-commanding supermodels of yore are Eastern European immigrants, many of them teens, who dominate the runways. Today, “fashion people do not talk about models with awe. Instead, they speak of them … as if they were lovable circus folk.” But the abject vulnerability that some of these rail-thin models exude has made them the focal point of fashion industry criticism. … A piece glimpses Jeffrey Sebelia’s fashion-design career as it stands after he won the third edition of Project Runway. His prize money covered his label’s startup debt with little left over, “business calls only trickled in,” and he’s is poised to make costumes for an upcoming live-action movie based on the Bratz toys. Still, crowds mob him. Though “[t]he winner of American Idol has already done what is required for mass success Replica Ebel Watches,” fashion “is far more specific, personal Seiko Replica Watches, and expensive than a song.”— P.G.

New York Times Magazine, Feb. 25 A cover piece examines Jeff Wall’s efforts to further connect photography and art. Wall draws inspiration from nonphotographers like Velázquez, Pollock, and Titian, and his works appear like paintings in galleries, reaching sizes of 7 by 12 feet on transparencies lit by fluorescent “light boxes.” Wall also poses his subjects into elaborate compositions, creating “patent contrivances, calling attention to their artificiality.”… A piece follows Nuclear Threat Initiative head Sam Nunn as he confronts “a deepening worldwide nuclear crisis.” Nunn’s vision of total nuclear disarmament across the globe strikes many as a peculiar turnaround. As longtime chair of the Senate armed services committee, Nunn had steered presidents from Carter to Bush Sr. to up defense spending, maintain a “nuclear deterrent,” and adopt a “first-use policy.” But after noting the threat of undeterrable terrorist groups detonating stolen nuclear bombs, Nunn’s stances shifted. After retiring from the Senate in 1995, he used his position atop the NTI to seek such measures as an international nuclear-fuel bank.— P.G.

Radar, March/April 2007 A piece considers the moral and political implications of gay babies. Fetal screening technology may soon let parents detect homosexuality, and scientists predict that within a decade parents will have the option of applying a hormone patch to set a gay fetus straight. But until such a “remedy” exists, pro-life conservatives and gay rights opponents “will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy.”… A piece probes Jim Carrey’s reputation as an on-set nightmare. One director Replica Girard Perregaux Watches, who collaborated with him on 2005’s Fun With Dick and Jane, started calling it “Fun With Jane.”… A piece examines how Wesley Snipes fell in with a group of anti-tax activists. Snipes turned himself in to the IRS in December and now faces up to 16 years in prison for tax evasion. “His attitude was: I’m a star and I can’t be touched,” a friend remembers.— C.B.

Newsweek, Feb. 26 The cover piece examines the “hidden epidemic of despair” that affects 6 million men a year. Psychologists have long considered depression a greater problem among women than men. But men may simply express it differently: “Men’s irritability is usually seen as a character flaw, not as a sign of depression,” says an expert. Now some doctors recommend treating the blues with hormonal medication or fast-acting antidepressants instead of SSRIs like Prozac. … A piece pegs presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a “turnaround” artist—someone good at reversing bad situations. But his reversals on social issues like gay rights and abortion have many conservatives questioning his authenticity. Despite inviting comparison to Sen. Ted Kennedy with his liberal views on gay rights in the past, Romney is now emphasizing his opposition to gay marriage. The hard part will be explaining his thinking without being accused of “flip-flopping”: “He’s not unwilling to have his mind changed,” says one Romney friend. “He’s very comfortable with blurry, gray areas.”— C.B.

Weekly Standard, Feb. 26 The cover piece profiles Civilization, a highbrow video game that has sold 8 million units since 1991, and its unassuming mastermind, Sid Meier. The “God game” in which “all-powerful players focus primarily on building rather than destroying,” attracts gamers from dorms to cubicles with its roots in world history, as players command vast societies against one another over hundreds of turns spanning virtual millenniums. The game boasts an educational quality; for one college junior, studying history “was always about going deeper into this game.”… A piece examines the candidates for France’s upcoming presidential elections, the winner of which will determine the course of the French government by “[seeing] to it that most of his party’s parliamentary candidates are loyalists.” To the author’s delight, the major candidates, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and lefty Ségolène Royal, both campaign for a “tougher” government. Sarkozy “sees France as a Judeo-Christian country,” and Royal “started going after the sacred cows of the left” like 35-hour workweeks and Iran’s access to nuclear facilities.— P.G.

The Nation, March 5 In the cover essay, Patricia J. Williams rails against the notion that presidential contender and Sen. Barack Obama somehow “transcends” race: ” ‘Transcendence’ implies rising above something, cutting through, being liberated from. What would it reveal about the hidden valuations of race if one were to invert the equation by positing that Barack Obama ‘transcended’ whiteness because his father was black?” For many people, his appeal seems to be what he is not: “He’s not a whiner; he’s not angry. … He is not the whole list of negatives that people like Chris Matthews or Joe Biden or a whole generation of fucked-up middle-class college students identify as ‘blackness.’ “… A piece explores the mounting discontent among conservatives in John McCain’s Arizona home district. Says one state committeeman: “The guy has no core, his only principle is winning the presidency. He likes to call his campaign the ’straight talk express.’ Well, down here we call it the ‘forked tongue express.’ “— C.B.

Economist, Feb. 17 An editorial anticipates a coming age of electronic money. “[C]ash is plainly still king,” but phone companies in some countries have already started integrating payment programs into their devices. The price: Anonymity. The editors argue it’s in the government’s interest to preserve anonymity in electronic transactions: “The more the state intrudes into electronic cash, the more it encourages inefficient notes and coin. … As Adam Smith would no doubt have observed Fake Jacob & Co Watches, just because the state can pry into electronic cash does not mean it should.”… An article criticizes North Korea’s latest nuclear deal, arguing that Kim Jong-il has proved himself untrustworthy. First, he misled South Korea; then, in 1994 he struck a similar deal that the United States suspects he later violated. The piece contends that even as other countries lift trade sanctions, “there should be no let-up on curtailing its criminal activities,” such as weapon selling and currency counterfeiting.— C.B.

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