Democracy in America | Government spending We lose money on each consultant, but we make it up in volume Sep 15th 2011 By M.S. HOW could it possibly cost more for a government agency to hire a private

Barbara Stanwyck: “We're both rotten!” Fred MacMurray: “Yeah – only you're a little more rotten.” -“Double Indemnity” (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the tw

Once upon a time, it was all so simple. Pitchers pitched. Hitters hit. If the stars lined up, somebody with a glove caught what they hit. And that's how baseball games were decided. Boy, how 1963 was

You should know by now that I normally do not get into much “news” around here. Especially when it’s not specifically Mac news. There are a ton of great Mac news sites out there and I leave that job u

This has not been one of those blogs that serves as an online confessional. But for once, I’d like to bare my soul a bit and share something about myself that caught my attention over the weekend. Wri

Michele Bachmann’s world view has been shaped by institutions and people unfamiliar to most Americans. Illustration by BARRY BLITT The transformation of Michele Bachmann from Tea Party insurgent and c

Tea Party’s War on America You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republica

Progress Hits Snag: Tiny Chips Use Outsize Power For decades, the power of computers has grown at a staggering rate as designers have managed to squeeze ever more and ever tinier transistors onto a si

My love life hit a major speed bump last Tuesday night. As I climbed into bed that fateful evening, I had decided to slip into something a little, um, more comfortable: a Zeo head strap thingy. For th

The Art of Summer Music of the Spheres For most fans attending a baseball game is a summer diversion, an addiction, an act of devotion. I’m a music critic, so for me it’s something else too: an immers

Illustration by CHRISTOPH NIEMANN In the past few years, the U.S. economy has been beset by the subprime meltdown, skyrocketing oil prices, the Eurozone debt crisis, and even the Tohoku earthquake. No

Community-college students enrolled in online courses fail and drop out more often than those whose coursework is classroom-based, according to a new study released by the Community College Research C

CORRECTION APPENDED Adapted from Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller, by Tracy Daugherty © 2011 by Tracy Daugherty. I. Prologue J oseph Heller crawled into the transparent womb at the front o

Illustration by TOM BACHTELL In the midst of the debt crisis in Washington, D.C., Danny Hartzell backed a Budget rental truck up to a no-frills apartment building that is on a strip of motels and pawn

T he ritual of hurling people into space is ingrained in the fabric of Florida's space coast , a 40-mile strip of eastern shoreline that runs from Titusville through Cape Canaveral to Palm Bay in the

Until Thursday, I was CTV’s Quebec City Bureau Chief, based at the National Assembly, mostly covering politics. It’s a fascinating beat – the most interesting provincial legislature in Canada, and the

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Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don’t laugh. It m