Editor's Note
36 and 44
by Paul Glastris

Tilting at Windmills
Emanuel can’t … Tenure by rubber stamp … Will Roberts reconsider? …
by Charles Peters

Cover . . .

The Wealth of Constellations
Can the free market save the space program?
by Charles Homans

Features . . .

Partisan Hacks
Conservatives have discovered the virtues of investigative journalism. But can their reporting survive their politics?
by Laura McGann

Degrees of Speed
Millions of unemployed Americans need to upgrade their skills, fast. Community colleges aren’t up to the task, but with help from Washington, they could be.
by Jamie P. Merisotis and Stan Jones

Nuclear Reactionaries
It’s a big-government-dependent tool to fight climate change that was championed by Jimmy Carter, is now dominated by the French, and has never managed to compete in the marketplace. So why, exactly, do Republicans love nuclear power so much?
by T. A. Frank

On Political Books . . .
Special Spring Books Issue

Days of the Dead
How the international drug trade turned a sleepy town on the U.S.-Mexican border into a war zone.
by Andrés Martinez

A Bridge Too Far?
Barack Obama’s election showed how far Americans had come on the issue of race. His presidency so far shows how much farther we have to go.
by Ed Kilgore

Failing State
Burma is dangerously close to collapse, an event that
could throw much of South and Southeast Asia into turmoil. A whole new strategy from Washington is called for.
by Joshua Kurlantzick

The A-hed and the A-hole
Did Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal ruin a once-great paper, or save it from itself?
by Justin Peters

Reading Milton Friedman in Dublin
Ireland’s politicians spent the ’90s and ’00s imitating the United States’ devotion to unfettered free markets. Unfortunately for the Irish, they succeeded.
by Henry Farrell

A Trip Down Memory Lame
Fred Thompson’s leisurely stroll through his not terribly interesting early years.
by Jamie Malanowski

Brains on Drugs
As it considers how to regulate the financial sector, Congress should heed the lessons of the Food and Drug Administration.
by Steven Teles

Infrequent Flyer
How the Marines spent thirty years and $30 billion on the V-22 Osprey, an aircraft that’s barely fit for combat.
by Mark Thompson

Infinite Regret
An account of five days on the road with David Foster Wallace offers a coda to the writer’s sadly truncated career.
by Michael O’Donnell