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Biblical Sense

Time on teaching the Bible in public schools.

Time, April 2 The cover piece advocates teaching the Bible in public schools. Supreme Court precedent distinguishes between the unconstitutional “teaching of religion” and permissible “teaching about religion.” “[T]the Bible is the most influential book ever written,” topping best-seller lists each year and supporting even competing political positions, yet a majority of Americans can’t name key Bible sections, even while they (mis-)quote scripture in jury deliberations. Still, critics see public Bible education as “a kind of promotion of the majority faith.” An article profiles the anarchic border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The mountains host a number of al-Qaida training camps, and Pakistani militants allied with the Taliban have “established Shari’a courts and executed ‘criminals’ on the basis of Islamic law.” Pakistan President Musharraf disenchanted moderates by becoming too authoritarian , forcing him to seek support from pro-Taliban fundamentalist parties. With the Pakistani military out of the question, the United States is banking on boosting the area’s infrastructure with foreign aid.— P.G.

Economist, March 24 An editorial examines the recent slump in “subprime” mortgages. The concern, the editors argue, “is that just as America’s housing boom was part of a synchronised global binge on cheap money, its bust may be part of a global story too.” The housing prices in Europe have behaved much like America’s: Just as the United States saw a boom after the Fed cut interest rates, Spain’s and Ireland’s housing prices rose after the euro’s success pushed interest rates down. To alleviate the pressure, politicians should “stop making a fetish of homeownership. … That they foster it with tax breaks, as they do in America, is daft.” Now that Hamas and Fatah have formed a unity government, a piece recommends that Israel reach out to Palestinian moderates and begin providing humanitarian aid once again. Rather than reject the new government entirely, “it would be wiser to take a half-step in response to what some see as a half-step by Hamas.”— C.B.

The Nation, April 2
The cover story details the legislative battle over the accountability of private security contractors in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld classified private contractors, now half of the 200,000 American forces in Iraq, as an “official part of the US war machine.” But contractor deaths are not counted alongside those of the U.S. military, contractor activity often goes undocumented, and certain firms seek protection from civilian lawsuits under the banner of military immunity. Though lawmakers have proposed bills “aimed at cracking down on no-bid contracts and cronyism,” the task of deploying American prosecutors to a war zone makes enforcement especially difficult. An article profiles the Farms Not Arms movement. Because “the war is taking a disproportionate toll on our rural communities,” the organization hopes to “bridge the divide between the antiwar coasts and the more prowar interior.” Goals include increasing the presence of farmers at peace rallies as well as promoting farms as “refuges where returning vets can heal their battle scars through the quiet, steady pace of agricultural work.”—P.G.

Washington Monthly, April 2007
The cover piece  calls for an overhaul of the “international security structure.” In the author’s view, “it may be that what is most broken today is not the international system, but American stewardship of it.” The global community can use economic leverage to ensure that “[e]veryone inside the system gets richer and stronger.” But the Bush administration sought to roll back the international system in the first term, targeting Iraq as a terrorist-sponsoring state while finding it hard to navigate the transnational space in which al-Qaida operates. The author’s solution: End the unilateral war on terror, and rebuild alliances. Gen. Wesley Clark offers policy advice to the Bush administration on avoiding war in Iran. Aside from success with the troop surge, which reportedly surprised Tehran, Clark recommends an influx of nonmilitary experts to “accelerate the emergence of effective Iraqi institutions.” Ultimately, “the policy issue comes down to a debate over leverage,” and the United States could sway Iran with noneconomic incentives such as “reexamination of security alignments for our purposes or activities in the region.”—P.G.

Harper’s, April 2007
The cover essay examines Shakespeare’s staying power in worldwide literary consciousness. Texts written before the Bard’s death mentioned his work only among that of “a constellation of theatrical stars.” But Shakespeare outlasted his peers by producing plays that any group can appropriate: “In the four centuries since his death, he has been made the apologist for all sorts of diametrically opposed ideologies,” from fascism to socialism. A piece weighs views on the state of Western literary readership. Jonathan Franzen deplores “the decline of reading in an electronic age,” while Lionel Trilling prefers an audience defined “by its abilities, by its perfections”—even if that limits its size. Ben Marcus claims that novelists should be responsible for edifying their readers. But all three agree that readership is important, bringing the author to contend, “The better question is not who will read, or how they will read, but why.” To answer this, she recommends “a critical mass of critics” steeped in “what is happening in a culture in a given time frame.”—P.G.

New York Times Magazine, March 25 In the cover story, Max Frankel, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times during the legal battle over the Pentagon Papers, illustrates the politics of government-to-journalist leaks. According to Frankel, “there are and always have been both good and bad leaks.” In the case of the Libby affair, leaks unearthed White House misrepresentation of evidence but also outed a covert operative. Regardless of content, Frankel states that “a free, unregulated and unpunished flow of leaks remains essential to the sophisticated reporting of diplomatic and military affairs, a safeguard of our democracy.” Another article highlights a new school of thought that says hearing voices isn’t necessarily a psychiatric symptom. Since 1991, the Hearing Voices Network, a U.K.-based organization, has advocated that voice-hearing “should be thought of not as a pathological phenomenon in need of eradication but as a meaningful, interpretable experience … ” One study of voice-hearers, both psychiatric patients and nonpatients, found that the nonpatients “devised ways of coping with and understanding” the voices. Another study concluded that “voices” are misperceptions of everyday, conscious thinking.— P.G.

Atlantic, April 2007
A cover piece on climate change wonders, “what might it do to the global distribution of money and power?” Some nations stand to benefit. Greenlanders are “cheering the retreat of the glaciers, since this melting stands to make their vast island far more valuable.” Russia could thaw out and become a revitalized superpower—imagine an “enormous, temperate, inviting Siberia.” Global warming might also spawn international tension as nations struggle for control of Antarctica and other formerly uninhabitable lands. Ultimately, the United States has a selfish interest in controlling greenhouse gasses: “[W]hen the global order already places America at No. 1, why would we want to run the risk of climate change that alters that order?” An article chronicles the growing problem of witness intimidation in inner cities. Criminals are “using increasingly sophisticated methods to bribe, intimidate, and harm witnesses.” In Baltimore, witnesses are so unlikely to show up on court day that the state’s attorney’s office “has resorted to arresting them just to compel their appearance.”— P.F.

New York, March 26 The multiauthored cover section compares New York City to London in areas ranging from fun to finance. New York takes a beating, emerging “as the suspicious, security-addled city … that is swiftly losing its claim to being the financial capital of the world.” Even New York’s rock bands falter: “Few have the courage to be truly reckless.” But in London, skyrocketing home prices leave residents planning to move to “somewhere … where the locals might occasionally talk about a book, and not just the fixed versus variable-rate mortgage.” An article profiles late essayist George Trow. He grew up fetishizing the lifestyle of New York aristocrats, taking an interest in “where [authority] came from, how it was exerted, the ways in which it was eroding.” The culmination of Trow’s writing career at The New Yorker, “Within the Context of No Context,” made a tale of cultural decay “shocking instead of predictable.” But Trow had been growing ever-more eccentric, and five years after father figure William Shawn left the magazine, he cut familiar ties and took to wandering about North America.— P.G.

New York Review of Books, March 29
Joseph Lelyveld compares two books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—one by former President Jimmy Carter, the other by journalist and former Israeli military policeman Jeffrey Goldberg. Lelyveld deems Carter’s Peace Not Apartheid an aging statesman’s bow, delivered with a “peculiar combination of rectitude and starchy pride” and calls for increased American pressure on Israel. Goldberg’s Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide offers no pat prescription. Instead, it is a “conflicted, deeply sad account of his own pilgrim’s progress: from starry-eyed Zionist pioneer … to disillusioned military policeman, to open-hearted reporter learning to see the struggle from more than one side.” A piece chronicles  another clash of civilizations, that of the British and the French. For centuries, the two countries have struggled for military, cultural, and economic dominance. That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British From the Sun King to the Present explains the history of “sweet enmity” between the two European powers and reveals that while the French and the British may serve as each other’s favorite punch line, “the fundamental character trait each nation deplores in the other are the same.”—P.F.

The New Yorker, March 26 A feature article exposes the United States’ failures to protect Iraqi employees and to benefit from their insight. “You are now belonging to no side,” says one such worker, who has received death threats from his fellow Iraqis. Moreover, Americans often distrust their Iraqi employees, and some seeking asylum in the United States have had their requests postponed or denied. The article says, “[I]t’s easier for the U.S. government to leave them to their fate while telling itself that ‘the good Iraqis’ are needed to build the new Iraq.” A piece explores the interplay between Rembrandt and Picasso. While Picasso “made a point of expelling sentiment from painting,” Rembrandt was an artist whose “every brush stroke was loaded with emotion.” Despite their differences, Picasso was drawn to the Dutch master because he “recognized in Rembrandt an ancestor of his own dangerous visual intelligence, which could move freely between the aesthetic convenience of the nude, and the messier sexier reality of the naked model.”— P.F.

Weekly Standard, March 26 The cover story surveys the state of post-Katrina New Orleans. The battered city faces a 68 percent increase in murders since 2004, and damage left few of the pre-hurricane schools and buses in usable condition. Because “paralyzed leadership … won’t exclude any neighborhoods from redevelopment for fear of political blowback,” clusters of abandoned, gutted houses abound. The city’s musical traditions have also taken a blow: The mayor’s office estimates that “only 10 percent of the city’s musicians had returned full-time.” But “beautiful architecture and brilliant music and world-class restaurants” are still there, and one resident says, “We have a very big soul here.” An article analyzes the homeowner’s-insurance crisis in Mississippi. An influx of claims from Katrina victims prompted major insurance companies to cut back on new policies. The author contends that only a fully private or fully public solution will improve Mississippians’ plight: Under the current hybrid system, “it’s possible for insurance companies to collect premiums for ‘safer’ coverage while sticking taxpayers with the serious bills.”— P.G.

Vanity Fair, April 2007 As The Sopranos begins its nine-episode swan song, a piece profiles series creator David Chase. The show’s atmosphere reflects his own personality: “He’s not moody—he’s always in a bad mood,” says actor “Little Steven” Van Zandt. After 20 years of shuttling from one TV project to another, Chase pitched the idea for a mobster show to networks, but they dismissed it as “too dark.” Now, 10 years later, HBO execs have been begging him to extend the show. “[B]ut he said, ‘No—this is it,’ ” recalls CEO Chris Albrecht. “Now people go, ‘What’s next? Where’s the next Sopranos?’ There is no next Sopranos.” A piece tells the stories of the six retired generals who spoke out against then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in April 2006. Since Gen. Paul Eaton called for Rumsfeld’s ouster in a New York Times op-ed, “several possible defense-related jobs have mysteriously dried up. ‘Maybe it’s the way I part my hair,’ he says.”— C.B.

Newsweek, March 26
The cover article examines the exercise-intelligence connection. Studies suggest aerobic exercise may enhance memory and reasoning faculties by increasing both blood flow to the brain and chemicals for information processing. Results hold particular importance for the old—aerobic activities seem to slow the effects of Alzheimer’s—and the young, whose frontal lobes may reap long-term benefits from exercise. Still, children can’t conquer math without good study habits: “Having a big, gorgeous brain isn’t enough, of course; it also has to be full. For that, kids have to hit the library as well as the gym.” Another piece reports on the discovery of e-mails indicating that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was involved in the recent “purge” of eight U.S. attorneys. By implicating White House staff in the firing of those “deemed not to be ‘loyal Bushies,’ ” the e-mails reveal the politicized nature of the dismissals, which were initially deemed a mere managerial move. Nevertheless, Gonzales’ removal is unlikely, given his closeness with President Bush and the difficulty of finding a replacement whom the Democratic-led Senate would confirm.—S.W.