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Rules Requiring Contraceptive Coverage Have Been In Force For Years

There’s been no let-up in the debate about the Obama administration’s rule requiring most employers to provide prescription birth control to their workers without additional cost. Here’s the rub: The only truly novel part of the plan is the “no cost” bit. The rule would mean, for the first time, that women won’t have to [...]

Colonial History, Through The Eyes Of The Colonized

Actor and writer Danai Gurira sometimes refers to herself as a “Zimerican”: She was born in Iowa, but spent most of her childhood in Harare, Zimbabwe — where her new play, The Convert, is set. “I grew up there from age 5 to 19,” Gurira says. “I’m back there every year, but I feel like [...]

Nuclear Safety, Costs Loom Over OK’d Reactors

The nuclear industry is celebrating the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to give the go-ahead for a utility company to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia, the first license to be granted for a new reactor in the U.S. since 1978. But last year’s accident at reactors in Fukushima, Japan, still clouds the future [...]

Catholics Split Over Obama Contraceptive Order

The conflict between the Catholic Bishops and the White House over contraceptive coverage has American Catholics choosing sides. Catholics narrowly support the White House position in polls. There are potential political consequences: In presidential elections, Catholics are swing voters. They supported Al Gore in 2000, President George W. Bush in ’04 and President Obama in [...]

How Two Bitter Adversaries Hatched A Plan To Change The Egg Business

Gene Gregory and Wayne Pacelle are the odd couple of American agriculture. “We were adversaries. Some might say, bitter adversaries,” says Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States. Pacelle’s organization says it wants to end factory farming. So Gene Gregory, president of the United Egg Producers, which represents most of the country’s [...]

How One George Lucas Fan Takes Fan Filmmaking Into His Own Hands

Blame Jar Jar Binks. If George Lucas had never created that annoying, slapstick-prone CGI character in The Phantom Menace, history would be different. No amount of “meesa so sorry” can make up for this abomination. And to add insult to injury, Lucas is sending a 3D Jar Jar Binks into theaters on February 10th. When [...]

A Comparison Of Candidates’ Tax Plans

From a flat tax to a “millionaires’ tax,” presidential candidates have put forth a variety of ideas for better steering the economy through changes to tax policies. Overview The Occupy Wall Street encampments have all but disappeared, but the issues raised by the movement’s rallying cry against inequality continue to have an impact on political [...]

A Spy On The Run, But Playing It Too ‘Safe’

It was only a matter of time before someone made a Tony Scott movie without Tony Scott. The director’s frequent collaborations with Denzel Washington are guilty-pleasure entertainments — particularly the dark exploitation-lite of 2004′s Man on Fire — but they’re mostly built on a familiar template. Washington’s always playing a cool-under-pressure character who’s asked to [...]

In War And ‘In Darkness,’ Our Worst And Best Emerge

s Not much is known about Leopold Socha, a sewage worker and petty thief who protected a small group of Jews hidden in the pipes beneath the then-Polish city of Lvov, while aboveground the occupying Nazis methodically gutted the Jewish ghetto. In Darkness, a visceral new addition to the burgeoning subgenre of Holocaust dramas from [...]

‘The Turin Horse’: The Abyss Gazes Implacably Back

Hungarian director Bela Tarr is the master of the hopeless slog. His latest film, The Turin Horse, is nowhere near his longest trudge — that would be the seven-hour Satantango, from 1994 — but it may be his last. Fittingly, it’s about the end of the world. Based on a scenario by longtime Tarr collaborator [...]