New Yorker

In his rave review of Katha Pollitt’s book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Adam Gopnik argues that “the choice—the only actual choice, in the world as it really is—is between safe, legal abortion and dangerous, illegal abortion. Everything else is just misogyny, cruelty, and superstition.”

Michael Specter comments that Francis “believes that science, rational thought, and data all play powerful and positive roles in human life,” but that the two GOP senators “seem as if they do not.”

The New Yorker editor and former Washington Post reporter contends that “the most overstated notion” about the late Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee “was the idea that he was an ideological man. This was a cartoon.” He and Post publisher Katharine Graham, though “often seen as ferociously committed liberals…were, in fact, committed to the First Amendment.”

The New Yorker magazine was a fierce opponent of President Bush (starting with Jane Mayer’s attacks on Bush anti-terrorist policies) and is now a enthusiastic supporter of President Obama. The latest proof comes in an article on Obama’s judicial legacy by New Yorker writer (and CNN legal analyst) Jeffrey Toobin. Like many a liberal journalist, Toobin wants to help the president pretend that…

A great many movement conservatives weren’t fans of Richard Nixon’s presidency, to the point that some of them, including William F. Buckley Jr., William Rusher, and M. Stanton Evans, backed a 1972 primary challenge to Nixon by Rep. John Ashbrook of Ohio. But has Nixon, despite his ideological squishiness, greatly influenced today’s Republican party? New Yorker blogger Jeff Shesol says he has…

Jeff Shesol, a presidential speechwriter during Bill Clinton’s second term as well as a book and comic-strip author, posted a piece Friday on The New Yorker’s website about “how Republicans have learned to stop worrying and love the lawsuit” – or, less charitably, about conservatives setting aside their traditional opposition to judicial activism whenever an activist decision would benefit them…

In a Friday-morning post, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall likened the Tea Party to pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine who apparently are responsible for the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Marshall wrote, “Here we have them break into nursing homes to photographs [sic] senator's comatose wives; there Putin gives them heavy armaments designed for full…

If you’re choosing one person who best represents America’s journalistic establishment, it’d be hard to top Steve Coll, a former Washington Post reporter and managing editor who’s now dean of Columbia University’s journalism school; a member of the Pulitzer Prize board; and a staff writer for the New Yorker. On Wednesday, Coll posted a piece on the New Yorker’s website in which he argued that…

Last fall, not long after the federal government’s partial shutdown ended, The New Yorker’s David Denby alleged that shutdown point man Ted Cruz seemed to be pursuing the presidency “by sowing as much confusion and disorder as possible—playing the joker in a seemingly nihilistic charade whose actual intent is a rational grab for power.” There’s nothing as pointed or nasty as that in “The…

Chris Matthews's recent book Tip and the Gipper examined how President Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill sometimes set aside their ideological differences in favor of compromising and dealmaking. In a Tuesday post, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer also portrays the '80s O'Neill positively, but in her case it's to contrast his statesmanlike reaction to terrorist attacks that occurred on…

One of the tender mercies of Stephen Colbert's ascension to the "Late Show" set at CBS is his shedding of the faux-conservative "high-status idiot" character. To conservatives, this "Colbert" has never seemed authentic or sustained cleverness -- how many times can you say you don't read or even like books? It mostly marks the deep ruts of liberal arrogance in their own mental superiority.…

Appearing on NBC's Today on Monday, New Yorker magazine editor and former Washington Post Moscow correspondent David Remnick fretted that the United States lacked the moral authority to oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine: "The United States also does not have the leverage it wants in historical terms. Invading countries is something the United States knows about from really raw experience. And…

Of all the stories written about the tragedy of the life of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman being cut short by heroin, the most bizarre has to be the article written by Lee "Sockpuppet" Siegel at the New Yorker. Unbelievably Siegel has actually found an upside to Hoffman's heroin addiction. He claims that it  helped Hoffman's performances. I kid you not. Here is Siegel coming close to glorifying…

Much will be written, and should be, about President Barack Obama's whining that racism partially explains the year-long plunge in his popularity since his reelection in 2012. What's also worth noting about the ponderous and painfully long (18 web pages) January 27 writeup in The New Yorker ("Going the Distance; On and off the road with Barack Obama") is David Remnick's apparent obsessions with…