At a time when the TV show “American Idol” garners greater levels of voter participation than actual American elections, there is reason to question whether the entertainment industry adds much civic value to our society. But viewers of NBC’s “The West Wing,” which will be taken off the air after seven seasons next month, know that there is a positive counter-example, making the show’s demise all the sadder. Read More…

Washington – Would Barry Goldwater be a Republican today?

It’s a question that might have been considered sacrilegious even a decade ago. But as the Republican Party searches for its soul, post-Tom DeLay and in advance of the 2006 and 2008 elections, it is a question worth contemplating. Read More…

The centrist Kadima Party’s victory on Tuesday sent shock waves through Israeli politics by relegating the conservative Likud to fifth place in the Knesset, down from winning 38 seats in 2003 to just 11 this week. It was a dramatic display of the electoral strength of the center. Read More…

Redistricting reform: the wonkishness of the term alone causes some folks to fall asleep – as it apparently did to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who reportedly face-planted on her desk for 15 minutes during a Supreme Court hearing last week on the constitutionality of Tom DeLay’s 2003 district-packing plan. Read More…

When the guy rolling the giant wooden cross down Bourbon Street passed the “Pimps and Ho’s” party on the balcony of the Hustler Club, you knew that juxtaposition-rich New Orleans was getting back to business.

In this first post-Hurricane Katrina Mardi Gras, there is a willful effort to look forward instead of back at the structural and psychological scars left by what a recently released White House report calls “the most destructive natural disaster in American history.” Read More…