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SLATE ON PAPER at Starbucks.

SLATE ON PAPER at Starbucks

Convinced as we are that the Web is the future, we’re not convinced that the future has arrived. To remedy the future’s tardiness, and to serve readers who can’t access the Web, we’re publishing a monthly, paper version of SLATESLATE ON PAPER.

The September issue of SLATE ON PAPERour first–contains the best of SLATE from our first weeks of publication. There’s Robert Wright on the Darwinist message of Independence Day; David Plotz on the logistics of presidential philandering; Jonathan Alter on Bob Woodward; Anne Hollander on fashion; and more. Look for it at selected Starbucks Coffee locations across the land. The cost: just $3.

Or, if you want to brew your own coffee and have SLATE ON PAPER delivered once a month for a year, you can subscribe for only $29.95. Call 800-555-4995 to place your order.

Everything Is Jake at SLATE

SLATE is happy to announce that Jacob Weisberg will join our staff later this month as chief political correspondent. His first assignment will be covering the brawls of the fall campaign.

Weisberg has written for nearly every political and cultural publication of note–the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Esquire, the Washington Monthly, and the National Interest, to name just a few. He comes to SLATE from New York magazine, where he served as a contributing editor for the last two years and wrote “The National Interest” column. Between 1989 and 1994, he worked at the New Republic as an editor and writer.

A self-described liberal, Weisberg has major quarrels with liberalism as it is practiced today. In fact, he’s written an entire book about those quarrels, In Defense of Government: The Fall and Rise of Public Trust (Scribner). Although Weisberg believes in an activist government that addresses social problems, he argues that liberals (as well as conservatives) have undermined public faith in government by overpromising what it can do.

Jake will be writing a weekly column for SLATE as well as features on politics and policy.

The Money’s on Clinton

With the pundits pronouncing Bob Dole “dead meat,” the ” Horse Race” will be paying more attention in coming weeks to the congressional mounts still racing. The polls show that Democrats have a fair shot at retaking the House, and even the Senate, and some members of Congress are complaining that Bill Clinton is hedging his bets. The president, they suspect, may see his second term as easier with a Republican Congress as a foil. Moreover, although Clinton’s campaign coffers are already overflowing, most of his fund raising continues to be on his own behalf, prompting speculation that, unsatisfied with a merely solid win, the president is determined to buy a landslide.

Stoned and Frayed

Like all other right-thinking Americans, we were shocked to learn that some scurrilous person has been placing ads on the Internet soliciting group sex with GOP political consultant Roger Stone and his former model wife.

Whoever that scurrilous person is, we suggest that if stimulation on the Internet is the object, he should forgo baser instincts for the intellectual thrills of SLATE’s ” The Fray.”

More than 6,000 of you have registered for “The Fray,” but our data show that most Fraysters are reading and not writing. Don’t be shy. There is room for everyone in “The Fray,” as reader “Corkynorm” reminded us. “You are opening a new world for me,” Corkynorm wrote, “No more dull e-mail to the same old personal list. Now I can express myself and may even spark some interest in others in my age group (senior, very senior citizen looking to brighten the sunset years).”

Enter “The Fray” as often as you like, but please don’t solicit kinky sex during your visits.

The Wound (Reprised)

If we needed additional evidence that the press is wrong about Bob Dole’s “reluctance” to invoke his war wound to win votes, there he was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Sept. 11, hushing a crowd of 120 members of Congress with his never-say-die spirit.

Dole read aloud from a letter written in 1945 by the Army to his parents:

“We regret to inform you that your son, Robert J. Dole, who was admitted to this hospital on 10 October 1945, is seriously ill with pulmonary infarction. At the present time it would appear that his recovery is somewhat questionable.”

Comparing his deathbed experience to his current standing in the polls, Dole said, “I’ve been in a tough spot before.”

But beating the reaper might be child’s play compared with beating Clinton.