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Documentarian Steve James has a journalist's nose for a great story. His beat is the challenges faced by low-income city kids, in this case young Chicagoans whose lives are blighted by the cycle of violence.

"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet." In an election year, this passage from Deuteronomy makes me feel slightly sick to my stomach.

New today from the Century.

So can we put Newt Gingrich's personal life and rhetoric aside and focus on how we can fix our families? Can we move the discussion of family away from demonizing same-gender relationships and taking rights away from women? Can we have an honest discussion about what we can do to help American families?

In this issue Rebekah Miles describes the key role that Ursula Niebuhr played in the development of her husband's thinking and writing ("Uncredited"). The article sent me to the bookshelf for Elisabeth Sifton's fascinating account of her parents' life together.

Among those of us who maintain that not everything the federal government does should be either privatized or eliminated, it's common to point out that income tax rates are a lot lower than they used to be, especially but not only for the rich.

Here are some things I read today but didn't get around to blogging about.

New today from the Century.

Two years before he died, Reinhold Niebuhr published one of his best-known articles. He didn't write it alone.