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Byline: ILLUSTRATION BY ROSS MacDONALD AMERICA NEEDS TALENT A look at the most popular show on television- America's Got Talent -explains why the U.S. needs its immigrants. Most often, they're [...]

Byline: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY TAMARA SHOPSIN CAPITALISM, BY GEORGE! Economic thinkers go in and out of fashion-from John Kenneth Galbraith to Thomas Piketty, to the unsinkable Ayn Rand-but one long-forgotten [...]

Byline: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY DARROW ENVY IS THE NEW GREED Thanks to Reagan's trickle-down economic gospel, and Oliver Stone's Wall Street, the sin of greed was rehabilitated, and widely celebrated, [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT THE FOG OF PEACE Ronald Reagan created the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1984, as a sop to the anti-nuclear movement. Before long, Congress gave [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT 'HELLO, SWEETHEART, GET ME DATA!' As the Internet changes journalism, one clear trend is a focus on data, championed by the likes of Vox's Ezra [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT STAMP OF SCANDALS When it comes to sexual adventures, what separates Republicans and Democrats? A long dirty-laundry list-Clinton, Sanford, Weiner, Hastert, and many others-prompts a [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT AND JUSTICES FOR ALL Amid a battle over the Supreme Court, the author points out how few of the justices' decisions have been memorable-and how [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT FROM HERE TO ETERNITY After a lifetime of competing-for the best toys, schools, vacations, etc.-baby-boomers are looking at the ultimate challenge: death. The author has [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT THE BLAIR-BUSH PROJECT With all the tabloid fodder that's come down the pike-Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall! Wendi Deng and former prime minister Tony Blair!-the [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT AHEAD BY A NOSE Donald Trump's whoppers have turned the media focus from gaffes-the fuel of election coverage past-to lies. But all that fact-checking won't [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT THE UNBEARABLE SILENCE OF P.C. With American campuses debating the limits of free expression, and professors everywhere self-censoring, the case of Nobel Prize-winning British biochemist [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT THE CORNER-OFFICE DELUSION Did Carly Fiorina wreck Hewlett-Packard, or succeed in keeping the company afloat? Does it matter? The last major business figure to run [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT FOOL'S PARADISE Donald Trump's G.O.P. rivals question his conservatism. The press treats him with disdain and ridicules his positions on everything from immigration to ISIS. [...]

THE FREEDOM OF Information Act (FOIA, pronounced 'foy-ah') is one of the most important weapons in the reporter's arsenal. Essentially, and with lots of exceptions and exclusions, it requires the [...]

ONE REASON SEEKERS of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It's that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT ADMISSION: IMPOSSIBLE? As millions of Americans begin their first year of college this fall, the Supreme Court will consider a major affirmative-action admissions case. That [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT FORGET ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS Every 2016 presidential candidate, from Ted Cruz to Hillary Clinton, agrees on one thing: the need to help the middle [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT THE AXIS OF ISIS It's been a long quarter-century since the first President Bush put the U.S. on the road to an Iraq-Afghanistan quagmire. It's [...]

Byline: ILLUSTRATIONS BY BARRY BLITT THE IRONY AND THE ECSTASY Every serious G.O.P. presidential aspirant invokes the glorious era of Ronald Reagan, to which the country must return. Ignore the [...]

Michael Kinsley comments on Mark Danner's criticism of Kinsley's article 'No Smoking Gun' related to the Downing Street memo as proof that President George W. Bush had decided to go to war against Iraq by July, 2002. Kinsley argues the memo is not proof enough to draw such conclusion. Danner offers a counter-reply.

THE FIRE EVERY TIME Recent events in Ukraine (not ' the Ukraine'), starting with Russia's annexation of Crimea, are only the latest test of one's foreign-policy chops. Calls abound for [...]

HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND? More bad news for boomers. 'Write about what you know,' the creative-writing teachers advise, hoping to avoid twenty-five stories about robots in love on Mars. [...]

Byline: Michael Kinsley Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The right-wing populist Tea Party movement has politicians of both parties spooked. Democrats fear it will bring so many Republicans to the [...]

Byline: Michael Kinsley Right-wing talk radio these days is carrying fewer commercials for second mortgages. (Consolidate your debts, lower your monthly payments, and have enough left over for that dream [...]

Byline: Michael Kinsley Image credit: George Bates One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles [...]

At first, I thought I was alone in the pool. It was a sparkling blue gem, implausibly planted in the skyscraper canyon of downtown Los Angeles, as if David Hockney, [...]

FIRING LINE was usually taped, three shows at a time, at the HBO studios in New York. The format evolved over the years. Toward the end, my role was to [...]

Slow start doesn't mean the A's have cracked Alfred E. Neuman would be proud. The cover boy from Mad magazine made a fictional career out of the line, "What, me […]

RIGHT-WING TALK RADIO these days is carrying fewer commercials for second mortgages. (Consolidate your debts, lower your monthly payments, and have enough left over for that dream vacation!) They've been [...]