If You Wish ‘Top Chef’ Were More High-Strung, Welcome Back ‘Just Desserts’

Some spin-offs are pointless; watered-down versions of their original selves, without purpose or energy. But some are like Top Chef: Just Desserts, which returns for its second season on Bravo tonight. TC: JD is really quite different from regular Top Chef and has its own distinct reason to exist. In short, based on the first [...]

Google Forking Over $500 Million In Online Pharmacy Ad Settlement

It’s official. Google has agreed to settle a federal probe into ads it ran for online Canadian pharmacies by forfeiting $500 million. The settlement had been widely anticipated since May, when the online powerhouse disclosed it had set aside that amount “in connection with a potential resolution of an investigation by the United States Department [...]

Rebels Move To Solidify Control Over Tripoli

Libyan loyalists launched counteroffensives throughout the capital on Wednesday, seemingly taking their cues from leader Moammar Gadhafi, who called on them from hiding to drive the “devils and traitors” from Tripoli. Clashes erupted in a neighborhood next to Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound a day after the sprawling command-and-control center was overrun by thousands of rebel [...]

The Evangelicals Engaged In Spiritual Warfare

An emerging Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus, is becoming more of a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role. The international “apostolic and prophetic” movement has been [...]

King’s Son And Friend Moved By Memorial Dedication

The national monument honoring Civil Rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is the only monument to an African-American on the National Mall, and the only one on that side of the Mall honoring a non-presidential figure. It shows King emerging from a stone extracted from a mountain, which is inspired by a line [...]

King’s Son And Friend Talk New Memorial, Media

Host Michel Martin, Ambassador Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III continue their conversation about the dedication of the national memorial to the slain civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The site opened to the public on Monday and will be officially [...]

Most U.S. House Members Not Doing Town Hall Meetings

If your member of Congress is holding town-hall meetings during their summer recess to discuss the great issues of the day with you and their other constituents, he or she is in the minority. The non-partisan group No Labels, created as a refuge for voters favoring pragmatic, less ideological solutions to the nation’s problems, surveyed [...]

‘Color Line’ Still A Potent Force In The U.S.

While many hoped Barack Obama’s presidency would usher in a post-racial period in America, law professor Randall Kennedy says the reality never lived up to that expectation. In The Persistence of the Color Line, Kennedy explores the racial issues still at play in Obama’s presidency and throughout the country. “I think that something big and [...]

Republicans Yearn For More On The 2012 Presidential Trail

The conservative opinion journal The Weekly Standard reported this week that Paul Ryan has decided “for the final time” that he will not be a candidate for president in 2012. The overtones of disappointment were not just audible, they were deafening. Even though Ryan has repeatedly rebuffed such urgings for months, the magazine had been [...]

‘Endless’ Amour: A Steamy Story Of Teenage Passion

Upon reading the deeply serious opening of Scott Spencer’s Endless Love, you will very likely laugh out loud. The tone is something like what you might find in a teenager’s diary: verbose, feverish, furiously self-important. This is a book, you know by the bottom of page one, beneath which the burners are always set on [...]