The New York Sun

Human beings are clever, bigheaded animals that have proved very formidable against predators like the now-extinct woolly mammoth and the near-extinct Bengal tiger. But we humans, particularly we modern humans, are also strangely vulnerable: fleshy, pudgy, and almost entirely bereft of natural defenses, such as thick outer shells, tusks, or sharp claws. Moreover, our gangly, awkward, injury-prone bodies are not particularly good at getting from place to place. Chimpanzees can at least swing from tree to tree — when was the last time you saw a… more

...Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle said, "I am encouraged by Congressman Ryan's leadership in his efforts to address this serious problem that continues to swallow the budget and swamp our economy."

And the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget agreed: "It shows tremendous courage and leadership on Congressman Ryan's part that he is willing to lay out a comprehensive and detailed plan ...." LINK

A former Senate aide who has long been promoting the idea of Mrs. Clinton as Senate majority leader, Steven Clemons, said the possibility has been all but foreclosed for now because Senator Reid of Nevada has said he has no plans to step aside. Mr. Clemons called offering the vice presidency to Mrs. Clinton "the politically mature thing to wow a person like myself."

"There's nothing John McCain could do to beat an Obama-Clinton ticket," Mr. Clemons said...LINK

Half of the world’s population now lives in cities, a number that will climb to 75% by the middle of the century. This development marks a radical break in human history, for humanity has until recently been overwhelmingly rural, concerned first and foremost with brute survival.

In “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx referred to “the idiocy of rural life” -- or so the mistranslation goes -- as an enduring problem. In fact, Marx wasn’t talking about “idiocy” at all. Rather, he… more

Bloomberg in DC: 'The Jig Is Up': Mayor Decries the Plans for Stimulus (The New York Sun)

"When you need stimulus you cut checks. You've got to get the money out the door," a senior economic adviser to Senator Obama, Austan Goolsbee, said yesterday at a campaign panel organized by the New America Foundation. more

The Bush administration is dispatching a joint Diplomatic Security-Federal Bureau of Investigation team to Khartoum to investigate the murder of an American diplomat working to promote democracy and changes in the electoral process in Sudan, John Granville. ...

A senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Peter Bergen, said he suspected the hand of Al Qaeda in the killing. "Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri have often called for attacks in Sudan in past months," Mr. Bergen said. "They see the… more

Getting a library card, going to the dentist, and keeping a job will soon yield up to $6,000 a year in bonus cash under a test program that New York City is trying as part of Mayor Bloomberg's anti-poverty initiative.About 13,000 families will be eligible for the payments, part of a $50 million program whose details were announced yesterday by the deputy mayor for health and human services, Linda Gibbs.The idea is to offer payments to… more

The Bush administration is beginning to appease rather than confront America's enemies, a former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and leading neoconservative thinker said yesterday, describing the president as "a failure" who is proving powerless to impose his views on his administration.Richard Perle offered a withering assessment of the president's impotence...saying American foreign policy is being applied by an out-of-control State Department.Although Mr. Perle said he no longer has access to the president, he said… more

With a droll, self-deprecating demeanor, Robert Wright engages a smiling Mickey Kaus each week in a conversation broadcast on their Web site, Bloggingheads.tv. Their running quarrel has attracted a growing number of Web users who want to see rather than merely read bloggers — and who appreciate the efforts to wrestle with the issues of the day.

Mr. Wright, a lean, neatly dressed fellow with a slightly dyspeptic online persona, is more liberal than Mr. Kaus. The founder of the blog… more

Just before the turn of the 20th century, a young inventor named Signor Marconi bluffed, guessed, and welded his way into creating the world's first radio. He wasn't sure how it worked, but it did. In 1896, he displayed the future of Howard Stern and Clear Channel, creating an electric charge in one wooden box that rang a bell in another across a West London room.

It didn't take long for Marconi to figure out how to transmit signals much longer… more