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Bureaucratic NightmareThe mess in Homeland Security.

By Josh Levin
Updated Friday, March 5, 2004, at 5:32 PM ET
New Republic

New Republic, March 15
Michael Crowley calls the Department of Homeland Security a "bureaucratic Frankenstein, with clumsily stitched-together limbs and an inadequate, misfiring brain." Homeland Security hasn't successfully recruited top talent, has failed to produce a unified terrorist list, and, after two years, can't even come up with a plan to analyze the weak points of the nation's infrastructure. Crowley says George W. Bush should shoulder the blame for using the department as a "rhetorical weapon" without providing adequate funding or commitment. … Jonathan Cohn thinks Dick Gephardt, and not John Edwards, is the ideal veep for the Democratic Party. Gephardt would help woo voters in his home state of Missouri and in labor-heavy West Virginia and Ohio and could "share a stage with Dick Cheney in a debate over foreign policy." But what about the fact that nobody wanted to vote for him the first time?

Economist

Economist, March 6
It's hard to root for anyone in Haiti, the magazine says. America's to blame for underestimating the intensity of the nation's rebel uprising and for letting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide die a "slow death by strangulation." Then again, maybe the U.S. shouldn't have let the "dogmatic" Aristide govern for so long in the first place. The real question the conflict raises is "how to deal with elected presidents who start to rule despotically." The mag's non-answer answer: Don't "allow such questions to become tainted by partisanship." … Strife between Shiite and Sunni Muslims lay dormant for the last 800 years, until Wahhabism came along to reignite the feud. For centuries, Shiites have "thrived on their own marginaliisation" and even now seem willing to wait for a democratic solution rather than strike back for recent violent attacks that left 170 dead in Iraq and more than 40 dead in Pakistan.

New York Times Magazine

New York Times Magazine, March 7
Elizabeth Rubin's cover story profiles former radical Muslims turned forceful critics of state-sponsored Wahhabism. Mansour al-Nogaidan, for one, is a journalist who wrote in a New York Times op-ed last November that "Saudi Arabia is bogged down by deep-rooted Islamic extremism." Mansour fomented extremism as a radical imam for the Salafiyya movement, an ascetic, cultlike group that transformed the poor Saudi province of Asir from an area of moderate Muslims to the intellectual cradle of four of the 9/11 hijackers. While in prison for the firebombing of a Western video store in Riyadh, Mansour was exposed to Western philosophy and began to question the Wahhabist ethic to hate "Jews, Christians, and Muslims not like you." Though he still lives in Saudi Arabia, where his articles are censored, Mansour now disavows organized religion and says the only way the country can become a liberal society is to "separate state and mosque."

Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard, March 8
David Tell gets to the nitty gritty of what 527s, soft-money-heavy groups with ostensibly no formal connection to any candidates or political parties, can do this election year. A recent Federal Election Commission ruling that attacks on particular candidates must be financed by hard money is bad news for Dems. With severe limitations on Bush-bashing from groups like the George Soros-backed America Coming Together, the incumbent's huge hard-money war chest is looking more formidable. … The dizzying lows of the magazine's "Casual" column—Victorino Matus on how glasses don't fit his big head, Matthew Continetti on the pain of receiving an Evite, and al-Qaida chaser Stephen F. Hayes on buying "fat pants"—have been lowered still further by Claudia Winkler's ruminations this week. Rejoice as Winkler decides, after a lifetime of agonizing, that it's OK to walk and drink coffee at the same time.

The New Yorker

The New Yorker, March 8
Seymour M. Hersh says U.S. intelligence knows Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is playing dumb vis-à-vis nuke peddler A.Q. Khan's dealings with Iran. The United States is only playing along with Musharraf's professed incredulity, says Hersh, as a quid pro quo for permission to search for Osama Bin Laden this spring in northern Pakistan. One CIA operative warns that Bin Laden's suspected hideout is "worse than Iraq," with no roads and a heavily armed populace. Besides, the 6-foot-5 Bin Laden might be hard to find because the area is "populated by a tribe of exceptionally tall people." … Highlights from Steve Martin's "studio script notes" on The Passion of the Christ: "Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself?"; "Is there someplace where Jesus could be using an iBook?"; "Could the Crucifixion scene involve something else? A Toyota would be wrong, but maybe there's a shape we can copyright, like a wagon wheel?"

Harper's

Harper's, March 2004
Annie Cheney reports that when you donate your body to science, it may be headed into the gruesome subculture of cadaver dealerships. Most suppliers are unregulated "tissue banks" who just need a "basic business license" to acquire their bodies from medical schools, hospitals, or nursing homes. Augie Perna, a torso specialist whose first company was called Limbs & Things, says it takes less than an hour to chop a fresh body into component parts, which can then be sold off for a total of up to $10,000 to surgery seminars. The business of "maintaining a regular supply of flesh and bones" can lead to shady dealings. One funeral director faced accusations of "stealing a pair of legs to use in his 'business on the side,' " while Perna's current supplier is under suspicion because of allegations by a woman who suspects it stole her mother's corpse.

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, March 8
Back to originally scheduled programming: Time revisits the war in Afghanistan and finds roughly one-third of the country under the control of Taliban-friendly warlords who use opium money to finance their armies. Like a story in the New York Review of Books last month, the piece casts doubts that Hamid Karzai's government has enough control to hold free elections in June. Military officials say the United States plans a major offensive for the spring to flush out Osama Bin Laden, who may be pinned down in a region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the "unique vegetation" of which was spotted in Bin Laden's last video dispatch. … Newsweek reports that the Taliban, once known for banning photographs, now regularly publishes three propaganda magazines with color photos of American troops frisking Afghan women, Hamid Karzai drinking wine, and glam shots of Taliban commanders.

Fearless leaders: Newsweek raises the possibility that John Kerry's prostate cancer stemmed from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Despite biographer Douglas Brinkley's claim that he's "obsessed with Agent Orange," Kerry, who had successful prostate surgery in 2003, says he's convinced he got cancer because of his genes. … Time says campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill is the unsung hero of the once downtrodden Kerry campaign. When she signed on last November, Cahill brought in staff members from the 1996 Senate campaign, began reaching out to veterans, and halted those Harley-riding photo ops. … Newsweek also reports that Ahmad Chalabi—widely discredited for supplying faulty intel on Iraqi WMD, is a "master tactician" who enjoys a surprising amount of power in Iraq's provisional government. Chalabi heads both the economic and finance committee and the "De-Baathification Commission," whose "wide-ranging" powers make it "a government within the government."

Body and soul: Newsweek's cover story says more people are surviving heart attacks, just to suffer strokes. Now, fewer than 5 percent of stroke victims receive the sole FDA-approved drug for removing blood clots in the brain, which offers the chance for full recovery but must be administered within three hours of the stroke. Other promising treatments: an anticlotting enzyme found in vampire bats and a corkscrew device that spears and fishes out blockages. … U.S. News tells the story of the Jewishness of the Christ and explains that Mel Gibson's The Passion "has helped to perpetuate some of the same misunderstandings that have plagued Christian-Jewish relations for nearly 2,000 years."

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Josh Levin is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at .
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