In the World

I'm a part-time student at a denominational seminary, where I'm working (very slowly) on an academic-track masters. It's generally been a good experience, but the school's not a perfect fit. Again and again, professors and coursework assume a ministry context.

Drew Westen is right: Obama would do well to name the villains in the economic story he tells the American people. But the villains aren't individuals; they're powers and principalities.

The debt-ceiling fight has been the dominant story out of Washington for weeks, and for the most part the White House hasn't looked too good. But in the last few days, the administration has taken some serious steps forward on other fronts.

It's official: Congress passed a debt-ceiling deal, and the president signed it. While this is certainly preferable to the country defaulting on its obligations, it's not an inspiring piece of legislation.

Sarah Posner is not impressed by the latest faith-based-coalition effort to prevent lawmakers in Washington from sacrificing the nation's poor on the altar of deficit hawkery.

In his combative response to President Obama's speech last night, House Speaker John Boehner offered an uncommonly crystalized rendition of an all too common bit of GOP nonsense.

The debt-ceiling fight is about politics, not policy. But count on the news media to conflate the two—in service of the trope that everyone just needs to meet in the middle of wherever they are right now.

Woody Guthrie: American Radical, by Will Kaufman. I love musician biographies; Humphrey Carpenter’s of Benjamin Britten is the most fascinating book I’ve read in years. I also love Guthrie’s music--he’s so much funnier and sharper-edged than the earnest troubadours who mimicked him in the 60s--and I’ll read anything about politics.

Stephen Colbert's commencement speech at Northwestern wasn't as funny as Conan O'Brien's at Dartmouth, but the inevitable "now I'm serious kids, please keep listening" section was far better--it was pretty much a hard-hitting sermon.

The most Christlike behavior I've seen in the news in some time comes from a Muslim victim of a hate crime.