If 2006 was an awful year for Iraq, then 2007 has been significantly better. Although the central government is frustratingly ineffective and Iraq remains a fragile and riven nation, we are seeing indisputable evidence of progress in the security realm, as well as political reconciliation from the bottom up. Iraq, which was hurling toward civil

As we approach next month’s report by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, the debate about Iraq will intensify. One key point of discussion will be a threshold question: How important is Iraq in the larger war against Islamic extremism? Is Iraq a central battleground in the fight against jihadists, or a distraction? Many leading political

As a friend and former colleague of both Matthew Scully and Michael Gerson — I was deputy director of speechwriting in the Bush administration in 2001-02 — I have many thoughts on the piece written by Matt in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic). But as a preliminary matter, I should say I believe Scully’s

Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health-Care Crisis and the People Who Pay the Priceby Jonathan Cohn, HarperCollins, 292 pp. $25.95. From the plight of the uninsured to the sorry future of Medicare, the failings of American health care make constant headlines, and have become a theme on the presidential campaign trail. Publishers, too, have

The immigration debate has been the subject of a prime-time address by President Bush, sparked demonstrations in the streets of several major cities, and last year played a key role in a number of congressional races. It is constantly on the lips of pundits and political commentators, and is already a factor in the presidential

Americans say they are very worried about health care: on generic lists of voter concerns, health issues regularly rank just behind terrorism and the Iraq war. And politicians are eager to do something about it. To empower consumers, the White House has advanced the idea of Health Savings Accounts; to help the uninsured, it has

Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitasby Tom Callahan, Crown. 292 pp. $24.95 The National Football League (NFL) is the most successful professional sports operation in history, a money-making machine that seems never to sleep. But is the game as sound as the balance sheet, or has the corporate and bureaucratic ethos that

Barack Obama, the Democratic star of the moment in American politics, is the junior Senator from Illinois, and for the past two years has been the only black member of the U.S. Senate. Elected after seven years in the Illinois state legislature and a short career as a lawyer and community activist in Chicago, he

In the contest for oddest pronouncement in a State of the Union address, high marks should go to President Bush’s call last January for a national ban on “creating human-animal hybrids.” Fortunately, the modern biotech laboratory does not yet resemble H.G. Wells’s island of Dr. Moreau, that fictional place where an exiled scientist blends man

In the most modern parts of the modern world, three aspects of fertility do seem historically unprecedented and clearly important. First, there is no stigma attached to being childless; a woman’s worth, in this life or the next, is not judged adversely if she chooses never to have children. Second, children are no longer economic