The New Yorker

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins, his Secretary of Labor, to draft a plan that might help Americans escape poverty in old age. "Keep it simple," he told her. "So simple that everybody will understand it." On August 14, 1935, after bargaining in Congress, Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act at a White House ceremony. The law "represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete," the President said. He… more

In early September, when Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, announced that her unwed seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant, many liberals were shocked, not by the revelation but by the reaction to it. They expected the news to dismay the evangelical voters that John McCain was courting with his choice of Palin. Yet reports from the floor of the Republican Convention, in St. Paul, quoted dozens of delegates who seemed unfazed, or even buoyed, by the news. A delegate from Louisiana told CBS News, "Like so many… more

The rise and fall of Joe the Plumber as a symbol of the American self-made man's resistance to progressive taxation began on October 12th, outside Toledo, Ohio. As Senator Barack Obama campaigned for the Presidency in a neighborhood of modest homes, a man named Samuel J. (Joe) Wurzelbacher approached. He said that he was getting ready to buy a company that earned about a quarter of a million dollars a year, and he asked if his taxes would rise under Obama's economic plan. The Senator acknowledged… more

David Westin has served as the president of ABC News for about eleven years. He oversees the journalism of “Nightline,” “World News with Charles Gibson,” and “20/20.” The Walt Disney Company owns ABC, however, and, at times, Westin has seemed to struggle to police the foggy border between news and entertainment. For example, in 2000--two Presidential-election cycles ago--he permitted the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to film a talk with President Clinton, to commemorate Earth Day. After this decision attracted criticism, on the ground that it was a… more

Early in 2007, when David Petraeus became Commanding General of United States and international forces in Iraq, he had in mind a strategy to manage the political pressures he would face because of the unpopularity of the war, then four years old, and of its author, George W. Bush. He pledged to be responsive to “both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue”--to his Commander-in-Chief in the White House, of course, but also to antiwar Democrats on Capitol Hill. Petraeus earned a doctoral… more

General Richard A. Cody graduated from West Point in 1972, flew helicopters, ascended to command the storied 101st Airborne Division, and then, toward the end of his career, settled into management; now, at fifty-seven, he wears four stars as the Army Vice-Chief of Staff. This summer, he will retire from military service.

In 2004, in a little-noted speech, Cody described the Army’s efforts to adapt to its new commitments. (It was attempting to fight terrorism, quell the Taliban, invade and pacify… more

In the summer of 1995, an Iranian man named Majid Yourdkhani allowed a friend to photocopy pages from “The Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel, at the small print shop that he owned in Tehran. Government agents arrested the friend and came looking for Majid, who secretly crossed the border to Turkey and then flew to Canada. In his haste, Majid was forced to leave behind his wife, Masomeh; for months afterward, Iranian government agents phoned her and said things… more

A Strike in the Dark; What did Israel bomb in Syria? (The New Yorker)

...Much of what one would expect to see around a secret nuclear site was lacking at the target, a former State Department intelligence expert who now deals with proliferation issues for the Congress said. "There is no security around the building," he said. "No barracks for the Army or the workers. No associated complex."

Jeffrey Lewis, who heads the non-proliferation program at the New… more

Armed and Dangerous (New Yorker) This week, in an article in the magazine and in an audio interview online, Steve Coll delves into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the current turmoil in Pakistan. “Few victims of political murder have contemplated their demise in advance as thoroughly as Benazir Bhutto did hers,” Coll writes. “In her final weeks, she criticized the country’s radical Islamist groups and also warned repeatedly about civil violence.” ...

At around noon on December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto arrived at a fourth-floor suite in the Serena Hotel in Islamabad to meet with Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan. She “was in a very good mood,” Karzai told me recently. She admired his cape, and they laughed as he recounted how he had acquired it -- an improbable tale that involved a visit to the exiled King of Afghanistan. They sipped tea and coffee and discussed the region’s gathering political… more