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Wednesday, August 27, 2008 5:33 AM

Hurricane Warning

As Hurricane Gustav strengthens and heads toward the Gulf of Mexico, "New Orleans Repeating Deadly Levee Mistakes" by AP's Cain Burdeau raises alarming issues. Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina:
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Friday, August 22, 2008 6:21 AM

Fun with Politics and God

As we head into the convention season, two Web sites are covering politics in fun ways. PolitiFact.com, sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, checks the accuracy of statements made in the presidential candidates' speeches
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Friday, August 08, 2008 6:23 AM

Wildfires

Julie Cart and Bettina Boxall of the Los Angeles Times have written an exceptional series on the soaring costs of Western wildfires, "Big Burn." They examine the causes, including drought, shrinking snowpacks, the spread of nonnative grasses and the Forest
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008 6:25 AM

The Bishop and the Rabbi

No, this post about a bishop and a rabbi isn't an attempt to repeat one of the old jokes my grandpa used to tell. Instead, it highlights two very different profiles that I've enjoyed recently. Andrew Corsello's "Let God Love Gene Robinson" in
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Thursday, July 10, 2008 6:41 AM

America's Toughest Mayor

The July edition of Esquire features an excellent story about the man who may have the toughest political job in America -- improving life in Newark, New Jersey. Scott Raab's "The Battle of Newark, Starring Cory Booker" profiles the city's young
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Wednesday, July 02, 2008 3:32 AM

Mid-East Media War

Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post has written a revealing two-part series on the Mid-East media campaigns of the U.S. government and al-Qaeda. It's fascinating to compare the campaigns' structures and their results. The centerpiece of Washington's
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Monday, June 30, 2008 6:20 AM

Covert Action

Seymour Hersh has a long history of helping break important stories: the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the C.I.A.'s illegal spying against Americans, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and many more. In the July 7 New Yorker, Hersh returns with another
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Monday, June 23, 2008 6:57 AM

Detainees

Two stories in the past week have taken us deep inside the war against terrorism to show us the people, places and techniques that the U.S. government has tried to keep hidden. In Sunday's New York Times, "Inside a 9/11 Mastermind's Interrogation" by
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Friday, June 20, 2008 6:33 AM

A Sharp Eye on Mass Transit

Miami-Dade County commissioners are considering tax hikes to fund their crumbling mass transit system. County taxpayers have been there before. In 2002, after rejecting four previous proposals for transit tax hikes, they approved a sales tax. Now, in
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Thursday, June 19, 2008 6:52 AM

Government Screw-Ups

I've seen a couple of great examples recently of television networks serving as watchdogs when the government acts with complete insensitivity toward some of its most vulnerable citizens. Brian Ross and Vic Walter of ABC News, in conjunction with Audrey
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Monday, May 12, 2008 9:53 PM

Filling In the Blanks

The National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University, collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. Peter Carlson of The Washington
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Monday, May 05, 2008 10:45 PM

Primary Politics

For depth of political coverage, it's hard to beat The Politico and politico.com. Since editors John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei launched the upstart Web site last year, it has quickly ramped up the quality and thoroughness of its coverage. For an
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Monday, April 21, 2008 8:30 AM

Double Dippers

Lucy Morgan of the St. Petersburg Times has been writing an outstanding series of reports on Florida officials who are double dipping — holding state jobs while collecting state pensions. In many cases, officials have "retired" and returned to the same
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:30 AM

Painful Policies

Two magazines have done terrific jobs recently of examining torture from the perspective of American soldiers in Iraq. "Exposure: The Woman behind the Camera at Abu Ghraib" by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris in the March 24 New Yorker profiles Army
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008 8:15 AM

A Looming Lack of Doctors?

In a two-part series, "Physician Shortage on the Horizon" and "Primary-Care Providers Lose Money Treating Medicare Patients," Mike Dennison of the Helena Independent Record examines our system of reimbursing doctors for their work, and how it contributes
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