The New Republic

This week, Los Angeles reelected a mayor in a race so unheralded that, on voting day, it failed to make the front of The Los Angeles Times. (Turn to page A3, goo-goo geeks.) So somehow the city has wound up again with Antonio Villaraigosa, a handsome fellow who keeps asking city residents to "dream with me," perhaps out of worry that they might awaken. Well, no danger of that just yet: Turnout barely reached 15 percent.

My relationship with my Los Angeles Times subscription is extremely contentious. Three times in the past six months, I have called up and cancelled the paper (you get an operator in Manila--much of the old circulation department has been outsourced), only to reconsider a few days later and restart my subscription.

The first time Jonathan Zittrain gave a speech on the future of computing, he greatly surprised his audience. The year was 1985, and Zittrain was a magazine columnist and the "system operator" of an online forum for users of Texas Instruments computers. As a leading figure in the community, Zittrain was invited to speak at a big convention in Chicago. The surprise was that Zittrain had recently turned fifteen. No one had ever met him in person: when he was appointed system operator, sight unseen, he… more

Insight on party decoration, gleaned at 6:30 p.m., 11/4/2008: Abundant balloons, in the absence of abundant human beings, is a real downer. When I arrived at a lobby restaurant in the downtown Los Angeles Marriott, Ohio had just been called for Barack Obama. The crowd of about 20 McCain-Palin supporters had gathered for an election-night party sponsored by an impressively lengthy line-up of Republican organizations in Los Angeles (the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, the Southern California Republican Club, the Korean American Republican Association, the San Fernando Valley Republican… more

The interior of the "Yes on 8" bus looks disappointingly similar to that of a Greyhound bus, apart from some perfunctory "Yes on 8" banners affixed to every other window. But the exterior, a celebration of heterosexual marriage, is more distinctive. Occupying the most prominent spot on the side of the bus is a larger-than-life white couple, a bride and groom, enjoying a wedding kiss. Next to them is a pair of greatly magnified golden rings. Farther down the flank of the bus is a happy… more

One of the major reasons why the current financial crisis is so threatening is the absence of what Tokyo-based investor Peter Tasker calls "strong hands"--long-term, patient, deep-pocketed investors that a teetering financial system needs to function in times of great uncertainty and stress. When Japan suffered its financial crisis in the 1990s, the strong hands that invested and kept the system afloat included private equity funds, insurance companies, and banks. But today, those financial actors are too leveraged, weak, or frightened to play a similar role. While… more

Jagdish Bhagwati is a humble man. He will tell you so himself. Describing the effect of his book In Defense of Globalization during a speech at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) last fall, the Columbia economist politely refused credit for single-handedly dampening growing concerns about the fallout from free trade. Fears of trade are "low-key," he said. "I won't say it's because of my book. I have colleagues who would say that. ... People believe I have a large claim to fame, so I… more

In late May, some 40 Pakistani journalists received a summons to an unusual press conference given by Baitullah Mehsud, the rarely photographed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who is accused of orchestrating the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, of sending suicide bombers to Spain earlier this year, and of dispatching an army of fighters into Afghanistan to attack U. S. and NATO forces in recent months. Surrounded by a posse of heavily armed Taliban guards, Mehsud boasted that he had hundreds of trained suicide bombers ready… more

With the arrival on the scene of a strange Alaskan who seems willing to say anything, I find myself looking in strange places for solace. News sites don't help, nor do blogs. They offer the reverse of being haunted by a relationship you once had: being haunted by a future relationship you don't want to have. I'm being forced to get to know someone whom I less and less enjoy knowing. My latest attempt to escape the northern chill was spent surfing a site called more

This afternoon, not long after Pervez Musharraf announced that he'd had his fill after almost nine years of ruling Pakistan, I wandered across Islamabad, to the headquarters of the Pakistan People's Party. The headquarters, which include a residence and a secretariat, are referred to collectively as the Zardari House, named after Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widow. The Zardari House has been the nerve center for the push to oust Musharraf over the past year. The last time I was there, on November 9,… more