An Abortion Battle, Fought to the Death

For more than 30 years the anti-abortion movement threw everything into driving Dr. George Tiller out of business, certain that his defeat would deal a devastating blow to the “abortion industry” that has terminated roughly 50 million pregnancies since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Published: Jul 25, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,622 words)

The Ultimate Obama Insider

It was about trust: if Valerie Jarrett told Barack Obama that something was the right thing to do, he would very likely do it.

Published: Jul 21, 2009
Length: 32 minutes (8,141 words)

A Fearless Activist in a Land of Thugs

Natalya Estemirova is gone now. Her executioners forced her into a car in front of her home in Chechnya and sped away with her on Wednesday morning. She managed to shout that she was being kidnapped, her last known words documenting the beginning of the crimes against her, just as she had documented crimes against uncountable others.

Published: Jul 17, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,168 words)

I Was a Baby Bulimic

I have neither a therapist’s diagnosis nor any scientific literature to support the following claim, and I can’t back it up with more than a cursory level of detail. So you’re just going to have to go with me on this: I was a baby bulimic.

Published: Jul 15, 2009
Length: 29 minutes (7,447 words)

She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It

Sarah Palin and Al Sharpton don’t ordinarily have much in common, but they achieved a rare harmonic convergence at Michael Jackson’s memorial service.

Author: Frank Rich
Published: Jul 11, 2009
Length: 6 minutes (1,553 words)

Sisters Face Death With Dignity and Reverence

Gravely ill with heart disease, tethered to an oxygen tank, her feet swollen and her appetite gone, Sister Dorothy Quinn, 87, readied herself to die in the nursing wing of the Sisters of St. Joseph convent where she has been a member since she was a teenager.

Author: Jane Gross
Published: Jul 8, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,759 words)

The Place of Women on the Court

In late February, three weeks after she had an operation for a recurrence of cancer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to Barack Obama’s first address to Congress. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t an event anyone expected her to attend. She went, she said, because she wanted the country to see that there was a woman on the Supreme Court.

Published: Jul 7, 2009
Length: 17 minutes (4,324 words)

Street Farmer

Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Will Allen asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

Published: Jul 1, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,907 words)

Who Can Possibly Govern California?

Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, has an emergency button under his desk that was installed 30 years ago after former City Supervisor Dan White entered City Hall through a window and fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Not knowing what the button was for, Newsom kept pushing it on his first day in office, only to have three sheriffs rush in repeatedly.

Published: Jul 1, 2009
Length: 33 minutes (8,334 words)

More Songs About Feelings and Women

Stuart Murdoch recruited the other six members of Belle and Sebastian for their shared sensibility rather than their musical chops. The band provided the perfect accompaniment to Murdoch’s wistful, sometimes lisping voice. Swirling guitars and jaunty piano and horns sometimes created a deceptively upbeat counterpoint to his wry yet bleak wordplay but could also combine to create serotonin-lowering tunes reminiscent of the sadly beautiful songs of Morrissey and Nick Drake, two of Murdoch’s great influences.

Published: Jun 26, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,978 words)