Comparing the national mood in the summer of 2009 with the national mood in the summer of 2001 is a bit like comparing bald eagles with chickens. Not only are they different birds altogether, but they live in entirely different environments. In the summer of 2001, the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. In the summer [...]
The federal government released its updated guidance for schools and flu this morning, a relatively short document with few surprises. As I laid out in my story this week in the newsstand version of TIME, schools will not be encouraged to close just because some students begin coming down with H1N1, a shift in policy [...]
If you read anything today about the great American writer and director, who has died at the age of 59, read this. And then watch this.
Iranian authorities have confirmed that they are holding three Americans–Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal–who were detained last Friday on the Iranian-Kurdish border, where they were apparently hiking for fun. They are all graduates of the University of California at Berkeley and range in age from 27 to 30. The obvious question to ask [...]
Nine Republicans voted with the Democrats to confirm. They are: Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.); Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.); Sen. Christopher Bond (Mo.); Sen. Susan Collins (Maine); Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine); Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.); Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.); Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.); Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio). It is safe to assume that none of them [...]
From our colleague Bobby Ghosh: Reality is catching up with the Obama administration’s Jan 21 deadline for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison. Speaking in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies this morning, John Brennan, the President’s assistant on homeland security and counterterrorism, hinted that legal and political challenges may push [...]
Twitter is down, and I cannot tweet about it, which leaves me all atwitter. No one can. The company claims it is a denial-of-service attack, one of several that have been hitting social networking sites in recent days, coinciding with the Defcon Hackers Convention in Las Vegas, at the Riviera, home of the “Crazy Girls” [...]
Back in the fall of 2008, the conservative Christian group the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) organized “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” a sort-of civil disobedience event for which pastors were encouraged to use their pulpits to endorse John McCain and challenge IRS regulations prohibiting such political activity by tax-exempt institutions. Now, in a somewhat surprising move, the [...]
