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Veteran Gingrich-watchers wouldn’t have predicted the latest Newt incarnation, either, but they probably weren’t too surprised. Over the course of his long political career – he first ran for Congress almost four decades ago – Gingrich has been consistently inconsistent and predictably unpredictable. Whatever the issue, he has been on all sides of it.
Many discussions of the Mormon tradition emphasize the utter absurdity of their beliefs. The average reader is left wondering how on earth Mormons could be so incredulous. In context, though, these caricatured beliefs make a certain kind of sense.
Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. There is at least one capital campaign to raise $25 million or more underway in virtually every major population center in North America. Smaller capital campaigns are even more numerous, with phone-a-thons, door-to-door drives, and mail solicitations increasing in popularity. Despite the ubiquity of fund-raising, we still have an imperfect understanding of the motivations for giving and the welfare implications for the giver. One may wonder: what moves all of these people to donate? Is such generosity necessarily welfare-enhancing for the giver?
By Corey Robin
Next to Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia is the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court. He also loves the television show 24. “Boy, those early seasons,” he tells his biographer, “I’d be up to two o’clock, because you’re at the end of one [episode], and you’d say, ‘No, I’ve got to see the next.’”
By Hanna Oldsman
In Voltaire’s Candide, the title character wanders through a life of brutal executions and natural disasters and angry mobs, and yet believes that he lives in the best of all possible worlds. When I think of misguided optimism, I think of those who are disinclined to do anything to change the world or their lives because (a) they believe all things serve some greater good or (b) they optimistically and passively wait for their god(s), or the people around them, to change their lives for the better.
By Steven J. Ross
Once upon a time, Barack Obama understood the power of a good story. His campaign mantras — “Yes we can” and “Change we can believe in” — inspired voters, especially young people, blacks and Latinos, and propelled him into the White House. But once in office, Obama lost the thread of the plot. He abandoned his original message and embraced compromise and bipartisanship rather than pushing for dramatic change. That narrative hasn’t gotten far with a recalcitrant Congress, especially Republicans, who have their own high concept to pitch: Just say no to Obama.
By Jerald Jellison
Despite your legal training, you’ve decided to pursue a career in business. This career change will immediately raise a red flag for business employers. Your answer can make or break your chance of employment. Why do you want to work in business rather than law? The question is especially vexing if your heart has been set on working as an attorney. That’s the reason you went to law school. Even today, if you a law firm offered you a job, you’d choose it over business. But, legal jobs are scarce in this economy.
By Martin Evans
On 11 January 1992 the Algerian President, the white-haired sixty-one year old Chadli Bendjedid, announced live on television that he was standing down as head of state with immediate effect. Nervous and ill at ease, the president read out a brief prepared statement. In it he explained his decision as a necessary one. Why? Because the democratic process which he had put in place two years earlier could no longer guarantee law and order on the streets.
By Elvin Lim
The first votes for the 2012 elections have been cast. Clearly the headline from last week’s Iowa caucuses is the Santorum surge in the last couple of days, better timed than any of the other candidates who had had their day in the sun. Oh, and Mitt Romney eked out about an 8-votes win matching his own performance by percentage points in 2008.
By Geoffrey Kabaservice
It’s hard not to feel at least a little sorry for Iowa’s conservative Republicans. Although three-quarters of the votes in Tuesday night’s caucus went to conservatives of one stripe or another, the winner by a bare eight votes was Mitt Romney, the most moderate candidate running – and “moderate” is an obscenity for conservatives.
By Katherine Connor Martin
On January 3, America’s quadrennial race for the White House began in earnest with the Iowa caucuses. If you find yourself wondering precisely what a caucus is, you’re not alone. The Byzantine process by which the US political parties choose their presidential nominees has a jargon all its own.
By Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson
Newt Gingrich’s brief turn as presidential front-runner was only the latest paroxysm of a tumultuous Republican primary season. What’s going on? Tensions within the Tea Party help explain the volatility of the Republican primary campaign, as candidates seek to appeal to competing elements of the Tea Party with varying success.
By Simon Baughen
The charitable status of private schools raises strong passions, both for and against. Those in the ‘anti’ camp were heartened by the Charity Act 2006. Section 3(2) explicitly provided that there was to be no presumption that purposes in the first three headings listed in s.2(2) – education, religion, prevention and relief of poverty – were for the public benefit. The Act also required the Charity Commission to provide Guidelines on what amounted to public benefit.
J. Lynn Helms, who served as Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the first years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, died on December 11, 2011. Helms played an instrumental role in breaking the 1981 strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). A former Marine Corps fighter pilot and business executive, who had little sympathy for labor unions in general and who believed that there was no place for a union organization of air traffic controllers at the FAA, he helped persuade President Ronald Reagan and top administration officials that they could weather a controllers’ strike, even if it meant firing more than two-thirds of the workforce.
By Edward Zelinsky
As every baseball fan knows, Albert Pujols has signed a ten year, $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels. Pujols, a three-time MVP who has hit 445 home runs so far in his major league career, deserves every penny he is paid. The competition for Pujols demonstrated meritocracy and markets at their best.
By Elvin Lim
The Republican game of musical chairs continues. One thing remains: Mitt Romney has held on to his seat as a leading contender for the nomination in the last four years.