BIRD'S EYE
In the Middle East, a New World
By Karl Zinsmeister
Optimism for the future of democracy in the Middle East.

SIDELIGHTS
News Scraps
By Brandon Bosworth
Paranoia at The New Yorker. FOX-blocking lefties. Haircuts for socialists. Jewish anti-Semites. Roosters in boxing gloves.

SCAN
Short News and Commentary
By Desmond Lachman, Brandon Bosworth, Jennifer Roback Morse, Alan Dowd, Ray Wisher, Iain Murray, Kenneth Lee
Back to hating America as usual. Sex fiction. U.S. guards Canada. Shooing the vultures. The libertine-librarian alliance. Amtrak derailed. Illegals against legals. Al-Absurda.

INDICATORS
Numbers, etc.
By Karl Zinsmeister, Joseph Light
They're not plutocrats, they're businesses! Sky-high taxes. TV is down on religion.

"LIVE" WITH TAE
John O'Neill
He inherited John Kerry's Swift Boat. But John O'Neill couldn't be more different from the man who made claims of personal heroism while calling other U.S. soldiers war criminals. Here O'Neill describes how Vietnam veterans battled candidate Kerry in 2004--despite efforts by a hostile media to suppress their story.

TWO VIEWS
Does Modern Science Undermine Atheism?
By Roy Varghese and Christopher Hitchens
Religious scientist Roy Varghese and atheist Christopher Hitchens debate what the latest science says about God.

FORWARD OBSERVER
Is Investing Really a Gamble? The Numbers
By James K. Glassman
Critics of private accounts are wrong to equate stocks with slots.

IN REAL LIFE
A Soldier Comes Home
By Greg Moore
Back from a hard stint in Iraq.

GEOPOLITICS
Democracy Is Now the Realistic Policy
By Victor Davis Hanson
Far from being impractical, naive, or dangerous, explaining to the world that America will from now on always encourage democratic rule is sober and in our own vital interest.

BEAT THE PRESS
Chicken Little Gets the Flu
By Chris Weinkopf
Our media and the Great Influenza Epidemic That Never Was.

FLASHBACK
Toledo's Golden Rule
By Bill Kauffman
The most colorful Tolstoyan anarchist ever to bear the honorific "Mayor."

BOOK TALK
Reviews of New Books
By Radek Sikorski, Steven Vincent, Daniel Kennelly
What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nationbuilding by Noah Feldman, I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, and The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream by Jeremy Rifkin.

DIGEST
Summaries of Important Research
Edited by Iain Murray
Incapacitate criminals, because you won't change many. Reading in decline. Rise of campus conservatives. A secure ID without libertarian angst. The myth of anti-Muslim bigotry.

OPINION PULSE
The Latest Survey Data
Edited by Karlyn Bowman
Seeding democracy. Tax reform. American optimism.

THE MAIL
Reader Feedback
Our low national savings rate. Is merit-pay for teachers without merit? Ukraine's (almost) stolen election. To the stars?

LAST GASP
Cartoon Humor