Karl Rove, it helps in the GOP to have no shame whatsoever.

New videos from Meaghan Smith and Moby with vocalist Inyang Bassey.

Is there a better way to define the craziness of the GOP? This is brilliant. You should probably watch it.

The economic relationship between China and the United States is the defining issue of our day. While debates over health care are vital to American society, and while challenges ranging from Iran to Afghanistan to North Korea are real, nothing will determine the arc of the coming decades – or will shape domestic life and prosperity in the United States – more than the emergence of China as a global economic superpower unrivalled except by America.

A few readings for the White House examination of next steps in Afghanistan.

Thirty Republican Senators voted that it’s okay for the US government to do business with companies that that require employees to agree that they cannot sue the contractor if they are gang raped by fellow employees.

So I’m initiating a weekend feature on the site – I’m trying to shake it up! – taking a look at a single issue from a variety of angles, making connections based on the available reporting from the week. Today I’ll be looking at Afghanistan, and the changing politics around the potential for escalating troop numbers.

Electing Barack Obama has actually been sort of the same thing. For a lot of people, just getting Obama elected president was IT. They’d been fighting (or hiding under the bed, whichever the choice) for so long that this was the be-all and end-all. And then he got elected (with the help of a lot of people and people who actually went and stood in the voting booth and made their choice) and everyone held their breaths and waited for some disaster to hit before the inaugural. And then Aretha Franklin stood up and sang and the Chief Justice screwed up the oath and they did it again. And there’s been all this noise trying to delegitimize the entire thing.

Only controversial nominees should expect a tough process. Well qualified, not controversial nominees should not be scared off by fear of having their reputations trashed if they allow their names to be submitted.

Jacob Weisberg thinks so. What’s most distinctive about the American press is not its freedom but its century-old tradition of independence—that it serves the public interest rather than those of parties, persuasions, or pressure groups. Media independence is a 20th-century innovation that has never fully taken root in many other countries that do have a [...]