Something to consider as you whine and curse the government for stealing all your hard earned money during tax season this year – the Internal Revenue Service is one of the most likely targets for domestic terrorism in the United States. Thursday’s attack in Austin, Texas, is just the latest incident of violence against the [...]

Cal Cunningham is making abolition of the filibuster a major part of his campaign the North Carolina Democratic Senate nomination. Personally, I think he’s mostly interested in it as a way to differentiate himself from his competitors but it’s a noble cause. There must be some part of Cunningham that actually sees how antidemocratic the [...]

By blaming soft drinks for our obesity epidemic in an earlier post, I think I’ve inadvertently stepped into a funky little debate. The Center For Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, is ticked  at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for its (unexpected?) partnership with Coca-Cola; in fact, they’ve demanded that [...]

As a rule, I like to say that lists are a shameful practice in journalism. Sure they’ll attract readers who want to see who made the cut or didn’t but such rankings are rarely informative or fullfilling at all. They don’t serve the public in any substantial way, and often the way the lists are [...]

This is a really interesting piece on Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks and her body in this week’s issue of New York magazine.  Hendricks is probably the most visible mainstream celebrity who is notable for a body that defies the twiggy, super-skinny standards of attractiveness that most of the rest of Hollywood buys into: You can [...]

The George Polk Awards for this year just came out. The list is pretty impressive, there’s been a lot of good journalism (David Grann, one of my favorite journalists out there, won the Award for Magazine Reporting for his story, Trial by Fire). One thing that strikes me from this list is that, with the [...]