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• Editorial - A Case of Religious Discrimination - NYTimes.com

  Displays of the Ten Commandments have long been a lightning rod in constitutional law, and so they are again today. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a challenge to a city’s decision to allow the Ten Commandments to be placed in a public park, while refusing to allow a different religion’s display. The court should rule that that city’s decision violates the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion.



• Op-Ed Columnist - Obama and the War on Brains - NYTimes.com

  Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.



• Adios, Conservative Kooks | The Journal of Doubt

  The conservative movement that has dominated American politics and government for the last thirty years has been toppled by an angry electorate hungry for change. Let us dance happily about conservatism’s demise and begin immediately to undo all the damage it has inflicted on our country and the world, but let’s also examine why it has failed and why it is being rejected so completely across the country.



• A Heart Machine for a Corpse


• Barack Obama's victory didn't magically eliminate America's problems and enemies. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

  Yes, yes, yes. I, too, took pleasure in standing in line and in exchanging pleasantries and greetings with the amazingly courteous staff at my polling station and the many citizens of my delightfully diverse Washington neighborhood. I, too, am still wearing my lapel sticker, with the jaunty words "I Voted." And I found it pretty easy to cast a vote that told the Republican Party, for which I recommended a vote last time, not to try any of this shit again.



• A New Dawn - WSJ.com

  As Barack Obama shifts from a waking dream to the real world, he faces the near-virtual reality of climate change. He has to move decisively, Ian McEwan writes.

• Close Reading: Victory Speech: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker

  A theatre critic once memorably complained of a bad play that it had not been a good night out for the English language. Among other triumphs, last Tuesday night was a very good night for the English language.



• The philosopher and the wolf - Telegraph



• Marc Chagall's Russian dolls - Telegraph