caro's most recent lbj book yet, but i certainly have it on my bedside table and will be reading it sometime this summer. >> for more information on this and other summer reading lists, visit booktv.org. next on booktv, satirist christopher buckley discusses his recent novel that revolves around a washington lobbyist, bird mcintyre, and neoconservative efforts to gain approval for a secret weapons system. this is about 40 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for coming out on a lovely friday night in washington. washington is truly in its glory tonight, and you probably had choices. i'd like to say hello to a very special friend, charlie peters. ladies and gentlemen, the founding editor of one of the great publications ever, "the

washington monthly." i've had a great fondness for this guy for many years. thank you for -- >> [inaudible] >> -- honoring me by being here. [applause] this is, indeed, my 15th reading at -- don't worry, i'm not going to read much. [laughter] barbara meade after one introduction, she started introducing me as sort of the eloise of politics & prose because i sort of grew up here. [laughter] my first reading was in 1982. but anyway, thank you for that very generous introduction. the, um, you know, introducing -- author introductions can be kind of funny. after a couple of books, i got, i started to bore of the writing

the about the author paragraph that appears on the back flap of the book, you know, that's the paragraph that authors pretend they didn't write. [laughter] you know, conservative leading voice of his generation. [laughter] oh, i didn't want write that. so i just started making them up. [laughter] and this was a book, i think it was called "little green men," and i wrote: he has been an adviser to every american president since william howard taft. [laughter] and i was on about day ten of a book tour, and you get -- you have the advantage of me today, this is only about day five. hello, douglas, my freshman college roommate is here. [laughter] by about day ten, you're a little punchy. and i was going into it was this, you know, there's a hierarchy of interviewers out

there, and you have npr and c-span, of course, and then down about here you've got the sort of, you know, the am drive time talk radio jocks, and you're on for -- you've got 90 seconds, so what's your book about? [laughter] and you hear cars honking in the background. and so i was going in to do this interview, and it was boston, i think. and i went in to the studio, and the host -- to use a somewhat elevated term -- was hunched over the "about the author" paragraph speed reading it, you know? [laughter] with beetling brow. and he looked up at me and said, you were an adviser to william howard taft? [laughter] and i was just punchy enough and said, yeah. yeah. yeah, i was. and so the brow now beetling

into sort of a cro-magnon protuberance, he said, well, so we could talk about that? [laughter] and i said, yeah, yeah, we could talk about that. [laughter] and we did. [laughter] and i have not yet been invited back on that show, but it was, it was really well worth it. [laughter] so here i stand before you, adviser -- and so if any of you have questions about what it was like to work for william howard taft, i can help you with that. anyway, it is, it's grand to be back in washington. i lived here for 30 years. i moved back to connecticut last year. so i can no longer, charlie, be accused of being an inside-the-beltway elitist. [laughter] i am now an i-95 elitest. but i, um, this was -- washington was and always will

be a very special place for me. i came down to write speeches for george herbert walker bush as when he was vice president. i write satire, and -- [laughter] here we are in ground zero, you know? it's, it is a satirist's play ground, washington. there's, you know, we never really lack for characters, scoundrels. my characters, fictional characters, tend to take after their author. they are sound rells. my first -- scoundrels. my first one was a guy named nick naylor who was a tobacco lobbyist. they made a movie of it. i don't know if you've seen the movie, but i want you to know i -- if you look at the credits, it says man on subway platform. [laughter] there's olivier, guilgood and

man on subway platform. but it was the cleveland park subway platform, so i urge you to -- [laughter] so in the course of 20 years, i have developed greatly as an artist of the written word, writing about tobacco lobbyists and defense lobbyists, this is called a lateral move. but i wanted to write a book about a subject dear to the heart of charlie peters' heart, i know, the military industrial complex. i think some of you may be old enough to have remembered president eisenhower's farewell address. in 1960 when he warned us about this thing, the military industrial complex, and now here we are, what, 52 years later with a defense budget of $700 billion. which is more than the next 14

highest-spent countries combined. combined. i, i looked it up recently. the england, england spends $62.7 billion, and france spends $62.5 billion. i think they want to keep parity in case they have to invade each other again. [laughter] we had the 100 years' war, then 30 years' war with nuclear weapons. you could have the 30 minute war, and you're done. so the main character of this book, his name is "bird" mcintyre, and he works for an aerospace giant called groping puppet -- punt. and they are based in missile gap, alabama, which seemed

likely. in the book the congress is concerned about spending, so right away you know it's fiction. [laughter] and he is, the company has come up with a scary new weapons program aimed at china, but they're having a hard time getting it through the appropriations committee because, you know, china is, it's tricky. we have a, um, we depend on china. in fact, there's a, an entity in the book called the u.s./china codependencety council. [laughter] and who's to say there isn't one out there? maybe "the washington monthly" is writing about it. but, you know, we, we depend on china to pay our monthly mortgage. and we are in one sense borrowing money from china in order to build weapons to protect us from china.

there is -- how do we get to that? [laughter] it reminds me a little bit of the great line, yogi berra's great moment, someone informed yogi berra that a jewish woman had been elected mayor of dublin, and his response to this was, only in america. [laughter] oh, yogi berra. [laughter] so anyway, so "bird" is tasked with fomenting anti-chinese sentiment. his boss tells him, bird, it's time to put the red back in red china. and so he, but he goes off to do his research, but he can't quite sort of figure out how to do this. so he goes to, he goes to see a woman named angel templeton, and angel is a tall, leggy, blond,

mini-skirted, ph.d., worked at the pent gone, worked -- pentagon, worked at the white house, and if she reminded you of a tall right-wing, tall, outrageous pundit, you would probably not be far from the mark. and she runs a think tank. doesn't everyone in washington? [laughter] someday i would like to have my own think tank. i could put fish in it. [laughter] but it's called the institute for continuing conflict. [laughter] and this is the center of the so-called oreo-con movement, hard on the outside, soft on the inside. [laughter] the outside being foreign policy, the inside being, you know, they don't particularly care about domestic policy as long as america is involved in war. and preferably drones are okay, but happened-to-hand combat is better as long that as the oreo-cons don't have to get

their hands dirty. you may remember when things started to go south after our invasion of iraq, a lot of the neocons sort of stepping back and saying, hey, don't blame us, the idea was perfectly sound. it was the execution. you know, wars are supposed to go perfectly, right? so he explains, bird explains his situation to angel, and he senses that he's in the right place because in the lobby of the icc, the institute for continuing conflict, is a, the quote by barry goldwater, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. and bird thinks, i have come to the right place. so together they confect this program, you could call it, and they plant a rumor. bird proposes that they plant a rumor that the chinese are trying to assassinate the dalai lama. and, um, because he's, he's

become convinced that this is the dalai lama is the only thing americans really care about in china. and i'll read you -- this is just a paragraph. um, and angel is skeptical. she says, well, you know, what are we offering by way of evidence for this? bird says, well, who needs evidence when you've got the internet? [laughter] she's still a little skeptical. we just post it on your facebook page, and you expect us to lead the evening news? and bird shrugs, he says, well, okay, look, there are one or two details to be worked out, but, you know, but i've done the research. and the dalai lama's the one thing having to do with china that americans actually care about. human rights? terrible working conditions in chinese factories? where's my ipad? global warming? taiwan? wasn't that some novel by james clivelle? [laughter] i mean, when's the last time you heard anyone say we really must

go to war with china over taiwan. but the dalai lama, americans love this guy. the whole world loves him. and what's not to love? he's a 75-year-old sweetie pie with glasses and the sandals and the robe and the hugging and the peace and the harmony and the reincarnation, nirvana, all of that. we can't get enough of him. but if the american people were told the communist swine in beijing were putting pellets in his yak butter, don't you think this would be a pr problem for them? angel said, beijing's just going to deny it. and he said, that's the beauty of it. they're going to deny it again and again and again. they get to put out statements saying we did not poison the tally llama. bird says, angel, it's a slam dunk. and angel says, please, don't use that expression. anyway, they plant their rumor, and things sort of take off from there. this is the, i'll just yak for a

little bit more. of the first book i've written involving china. and there was a challenge involved. if you write novels, you have to make up the names for characters, and charles dickens was pretty good at it. but chinese names are complex. i mean, who here can recite the full name of the blind activist who was seeking refuge in the u.s. embassy in china? chen guangcheng. but even over there now when they're pulling up the posters, they've shortened it to cgc which looks like kfc. it looks like they're promoting fried chicken. [laughter] so anyway, i thought as, i thought i had best keep the names of the characters, you

know, memorable to a western ear, and so i named the president of china president fa, and then the evil head of the secret police was minister lo. and as i added characters, it occurred to me that all of their names were variations on do re mi, fa. i think at one point i actually had a character named tofu. [laughter] so this was a bit of a challenge. a couple of riffs about sun xiu. there are a lot of sun xiu quotes, and they are included at no extra charge. [laughter] i came across a fascinating term, actually, in a book by henry kissinger who for his book on china chose a slightly less frisky title than mine. if you're henry kissinger, you can just call your book "on

china." [laughter] you know, they'll buy it. i have to sort of dance like a french poodle on my -- [laughter] they eat puppies, don't they? but sun xiu copied this interesting -- coined this interesting term spelled shi, and it's tricky to translate, but it means roughly the art of understanding matters in flux. so there is -- and shi happens. [laughter] get it? [laughter] indeed, i am -- there is a lot of shi in this book and the author is, indeed, full of shi. so why don't i sort of leave it there. i would tell you more about the book, but then you would, you would -- what incentive would you have? and i think, mike, we should

mention the new study that just came out yesterday, possibly you haven't heard of it, but a very scientific study that shows that people who pay full retail price for books derive 67% more enjoyment. [laughter] it was very scientifically conducted by the authors' guild. [laughter] so anyway, full retail price, and i thank you for having me back, and i'd be happy to take such questions as you might have. about bulk purchases or -- [laughter] i will even entertain questions on the greatness of charlie peters, but only one. [applause] thank you, thank you. >> i did fail to mention, we have time for questions, but if you could get to this microphone since we're recording, it would

help a lot. please, don't be shy. >> i could ask myself a question. [laughter] charlie, how have you been? [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> uh-oh. >> what happens -- [inaudible] >> i'm sorry, what -- >> what happened and why to liberals -- [inaudible] >> charlie peters, founding editor of "the washington monthly," asks what has happened to liberal republicans. >> and whey? >> and why? is this a trick question? i was very saddened to see that richard lugar was was defeated

the other day. richard lugar, to me, was my kind of guy. that must sound a little weird. richard lugar was nixon's favorite mayor, do you remember? >> [inaudible] >> yeah. he was mayor of indianapolis. he was defeated in a primary, in a primary contest the other day by the candidate of the tea party. and so it seems as in france where the electorate last sunday, you know, went either, went to the hard right and the hard left, we seem to be doing that. i was struck by the fact that the french, by law, their presidential elections can only last one month. it's not a perfect system. you still end up with a french president. [laughter] but i wondered if we might take

a pause from the friend -- take a page from the french playbook. it's distressing, charlie. you know, the sensible center is, is an increasingly vacant space. there are many factors. i think the 24/7 news cycle has not helped. i mean, in the -- when i was growing up, the evening, you know, the evening news -- i remember the debate, there was a fierce debate in the '60s when they decided to extend the walter cronkite's 15 minutes of evening news to half an hour, and they were saying, well, what are we going to put on the next 15 minutes? but there is that sort of scorpion in the bottle element, and the moment anyone says something original or perhaps slightly daring, they're pounced

upon. >> that is rare, that is so rare. >> well, yeah, that's not, i guess, the main problem. but perhaps, perhaps it will come back. but i to think these campaigns have a certain interm in and about be to them, and i think that drives away some people that might otherwise -- it's become very easy to be cynical these days, and that is, indeed, in the terminology of the watergate era a cancer growing on the body politic. kind of aggression's law. you know, the bad drive out the good. sorry, a bit of an incoherent answer there, but, yes. >> did you have a chance to read any chinese literature -- [inaudible]

>> the question is, did i immerse myself in chinese literature? deeply. [laughter] deeply. i would have talked about that, but it's a very sophisticated subject, and i'm not sure an audience like this would really be able to keep up. [laughter] we could talk about shi some more, the you wanted. [laughter] to your question, i hope that answers your question. i -- yes, ma'am. >> following up on mr. peters' question, i'm curious since you're, you can't necessarily speak for him, but since your father was sort of a father of modern conservativism, what

would he think of what he's wrought? and some of which he must have seen in the closing days of his life. i mean, the crudity and the lies that we see now, i wonder maybe that's not a fair question, but it does heap to mind. it does leap to mind. >> did you all hear the question? you know, i thank you for your question. it's tricky trying to channel your father's ghost. hamlet tried it. [laughter] didn't end up so well. my father died in 2008, and he had, i think he, um, you know, he lived to, um, see it has been said that, you know, if it had not been for -- it has been said that if it hadn't been for bill

buckley, there wouldn't have been a barry goldwater, and if there hadn't have been a barry goldwater, there was the other guy, reagan. he, i think he was, um, so he, you know, he, he lived to see history coalesce in certain ways that he launched a bit of shi, you might say. and i don't mean that flippantly, but, you know, the directional velocity of ideas and movement. he was asked sometime before he died what he thought of the modern, what had now become the modern conservative movement, and he answered it in a very william f. buckley way. he replied that he thought the movement was in need of

reprisonty nation which probably sent a few people to the dictionary. i don't know if that answers your question. i miss him terribly, and i often mentally reach for the phone wanting to, you know, wanting to get his take on something. but in some ways i'm glad he's not around to see it. [laughter] yes. >> um, i'm here essentially because of the book you wrote about your late parents, and i related to it a great deal. and do you not miss the times where there could be an element of complexity in one's political persona? i mean, i grew up with a father who was a registered republican. he always voted republican. he was a childhood of the depression, i think he was a fiscal republican. but socially i didn't realize that there were certain things that were issues. i didn't realize that being gay was an issue or racial -- i

mean, this was, we were taught to be tolerant. this was america. you know? he was a child of an immigrant. and so i think that the depression informed his being a republican for fiscal reasons, but at the same time he could embrace or even if he couldn't embrace, he could respect, um, i think he was very voltaire in his views. >> must have been quite a guy. >> yes. and i miss him desperately. >> i bet you do. >> but i find that that is missing. we've become a nation of our, a lot of fundamentalists, it seems to me. and i don't think it's just me or my perception. >> it is surely a subject for a better mind than my own to address whether or not politics is nastier than it has ever been.

i mean, i'm not sure it is. it's much more on display because every time you look up there's someone yattering on on tv about it. but, i mean, be you look back at the -- if you look back at the 1860 campaign or the you look back at the things that were said about president lincoln in the civil war, would anyone -- i put it to you, lincoln was called a baboon. in a newspaper editorial. now, would an editorialist dare to say that about our current president? i suppose, yeah. it does, we do seem to be awfully angry. and we do seem, frankly, to me, to be talking about stuff that's the relatively unimportant stuff. we are going broke. you know, there's this -- i try,

i do try to write funny books, but there is, there is -- this book is also about, um, the fact that, you know, we're running unsupportable deficits. >> middle class. i mean, i remember the educational, um, films they used to show us in grade school that were, essentially, propaganda. but the one that got to me, and it was in grade school, was china, the sleeping giant. >> right. >> i mean, i had images, you know, at 8 years of age because this was in a film, chinese climbing in our windows and taking us over, and i read the paper thousand, and i think, you know, that -- hmm. [laughter] so i look forward to reading your book. >> well, i thank you for your question. >> thank you. >> thank you, thank you. [applause] >> i have two questions. is there any chance that doomsday might become a movie?

[laughter] i mean, just on the expenses of health care and caring for the elderly, and this one really dovetailed really well into it. i can't wait to get into it. >> a number of my books are in what is called development hell. [laughter] um, i think any, it takes several miracles for a book to become a movie unless the author is stephen king or john grisham. ernest hemingway, most of his books were made into movies, and he apparently hated them, although i thought ingrid bergman and gary cooper looked pretty good in that one. he absolutely despised that way, so he formulated hemingway's

rules for writers when dealing with hollywood, and it goes like this: you take the manuscript of your book, and you put it in the trunk of your car, and you drive up to the california state line, and you stop this side of the california state line, you take your manuscript out of the trunk, you make them throw the money across first. [laughter] and then you hurl your manuscript at them and drive back east. [laughter] and it's, it's probably a pretty good rule. but i think four or five of them are -- three years ago my agent called me a great state of excitement, and she said, are you sitting down? i said, well, yes. yes, i am sitting down. she said, i've got the most amazing news. i said, yeah? she said, charlize theron is officially attached to florence of arabia. i was sort of waiting for -- and? i said, yeah?

well, she's attached to the project. i said, well, what does that -- does that mean they've stapled her to the script? [laughter] and you will have noticed that charlize theron's latest movie was not florence of arabia. [laughter] so the answer is, i don't know. i wish, or as we say, as they say at state department briefings, i have nothing for you on that at this time. [laughter] >> my second question is, once you start on your project, how do you discipline yourself, and what is your writing day like? [laughter] >> people sometimes say, oh, you write funny books, do you laugh as you write? and -- [laughter] and to that i say if you were to walk into my study while i was

writing, the sound that you are likelier to hear is a soft whimper. [laughter] or even pathetic sob. it's, you just, you just stay at it. someone once asked anthony burgess in whose company i certainly don't put myself how it was that he managed to write two books a year. he was very prorisk. and -- prolific. and he said, well, i write a thousand words a day, and in a hyundai cans, i have -- hundred days, i have a book. it doesn't quite work that way. people say how long did your last book take, and my answer is 59 years which is, actually, true. anyway -- how are we doing on time? >> great. we have time for one more if it's out there. come on up.

>> don't be bashful. >> you said you don't laugh when you write. i read your book the last two days, and one does laugh when one reads it. >> oh, good. [laughter] >> my wife was trying to read another book at the time, and i kept interrupting her, you have to hear this -- she's reading robert caro's book on -- >> will you shut the -- up? >> the temptation was there, but she didn't. [laughter] it's not a question, really, you -- there was an author here a couple of weeks ago who said someone just told me he read my book, he couldn't put it down, he read it in one night. it took me two years to write that book, he said. well, yes, i did read your book almost in one -- but from your

earlier books, all of which i've read, you continue to go over them s you see things that remind you of it, boomsday, for one, and there are scenes from florence of arabia. in a mixed crowd, i don't think i should quote the particular scene that comes up -- >> no, don't talk about that scene. [laughter] >> so not a question, just a sincere thank you very much for going through the agony of writing a funny book, because they are delightful to read. >> well, i thank you. i thought for, i was afraid for a moment you were going to quote a great line that mark twain said once about a book by henry james. he said once you put it down, you can't pick be it up. [laughter] thanks very much. [applause]

>> we'd like to hear are you. tweet us your feedback. twitter.com/booktv. >> before we get into the book, i just thought i'd say a few words about media matters for those of you who are not familiar with it, and we'd like you to be familiar with it. i founded the organization in 2004 to monitor, analyze and correct conservative misinformation in the media. we were basically trying to solve two problems. one was the rise of explicitly right-wing media over the past 20 or 25 years. we all know what that is, places like the washington times, most of talk radio and, of course, the fox news channel. and those media institutions were operating with total impunity and zero accountability before media matters came along to shine the light on what was going on in those institutions. so that was half the problem. the other half of the problem was the mainstream media and the

fact that it is, it was, and it continues to be under concerted attack from the organized right. the effect of that is that to avoid the label of liberal media bias. the press all too often bends over backwards to accommodate conservative demands, and we see that in the imbalance in our op-ed pages, and we also see that, you know, in the kind of a rigged cable debate that we see and in various other places in the media. so we were also trying to address that. and when we started, there really wasn't an organization that had built a professional way for people other than the right wing to have their concerns addressed directly in the media. and so part of what we encourage folks to do is to engage with our work. there are action tools attached to the research that we publish. the research is across a broad range of issues from choice to

lgbt issues to climate change. we've got a staff working 24/7 in offices over near capitol hill, and they're documenting every day and pushing back against various forms of what we consider to be conservative misinformation. and we'd like you to engage in that with us, check out our web site at mediamatters.org. so with that, one of the things we do at media matters is we watch fox so you don't have to. [laughter] and in watching fox over these last few years, we noticed something. the original model of fox which seemed to be putting conservative talk radio on tv was morphing into something they call me dangerous, i will say that they are dangerous, into something more dangerous, into a partisan political operation, a hard core partisan operation under the false nag of journalism -- flag of journalism and the phony phrase of fair and

balanced. it has many elements to it that we explore in the book, and they're elements that one doesn't normally see in media, even in conservative media. and that ranges from the raising of money for republican candidates and causes, on fox air and off. we all know that fox is a powerful deliverer of the republican message, and they're also involved in mobilization. they are actively involved in fomenting the early tea party protests in april 2009 as we document in the book. so with that, i wanted to turn this over to ari to talk a little bit more about why we got into this book, how we worked on it and what the execution was like. thanks. >> sure. this book, i want to say, david and i are the authors on the cover, but you'll notice and we put and media matters for america. and the reason we did that was because -- is this mic on? all right. the reason we did that was

because, you know, this work was based on our research staff, on our amazing research staff who had done, you know, who sit watching fox, who analyze it, who correct misinformation, who dug into it. and their work is so fundamental to our book that all of them, you know, are authors of this. so this is really a group effort. um, the core of the book, what makes up the real kind of evidence is a series of e-mails that were leaked to us from inside fox news that show the network manipulating coverage. and i wanted to read you the opening of the book which kind of sets the tone for not what you see on air, but how the management of fox news behaves. so i'll just read that right now. on august 2, 2009, onboard the six-star luxury liner crystal serenity somewhere in the middle of the mediterranean sea, fox news' managing editor bill salmon rose to address the supporters of hillsdale college located just over 100 miles west of detroit. his audience had paid between

$13,800 and $37,600 per couple to listen to the all-star lineup of conservative journalists and scholars as they traveled from venn fission to athens via istanbul. salmon was the featured speaker. he began with remarks speculating that mary matalin, who was onboard the ship simply on vacation, might have mischief sousely arranged to have her husband, liberal james carville, along to save his soul. then salmon made a startling admission, and here's what he said: you know, speaking of mischief, last year candidate barack obama stood on the sidewalk in toledo, ohio, and first let it slip to joe the plumber that he wanted to, quote, spread the wealth around. at the time i have to admit that i went on fox news and publicly engaged in some speculation about whether barack obama really advocated socialism, a premise that i privately found farfetched. at the time salmon made these mischievous speculations, he was fox news' deputy washington editor, and it was his job, and

it was his job to oversee reporting of the news on one of the country's major cable networks. yet here in front of a friendly audience on a luxury cruise an ocean away from the united states, he was candidly, nonchalantly admitting to conspicuously misbe representing the ideology of a presidential candidate to fox's audience. e-mails written by salmon and a fox producer show this calculated smear against obama was part of a coordinated campaign of deception. not only had salmon personally appeared on the network to make these charges against barack obama, but he'd also sent journalists who worked for him to cover the obsessions and connections to marxism. and we have the e-mails in the book if you're interested in reading them, so i'm not going to bother you with reading e-mails. less than t 0 minutes later -- 90 minutes later, salmon was claiming that barack obama was, quote, drawn to marxists as he was drawn to liberals, and he was drawn to socialism by his

own admission as a young man. the next morning he reiterated his far-fetched theory about racial obsessions. memos from the show's producers reveal the entire third segment was built around the e-mail, and you can see those e-mails in the book. as salmon spoke, the graphic appearing on the lower section of the screen read the real barack obama, obama's radical past, obama's chosen friends, marxist professors and structural feminists. that same day salmon published a piece claiming, quote, obama himself acknowledges he was drawn to socialists and each marxists as a college student. it was a peculiar amount of attention for something he really didn't believe, particularly since this information was new or newsworthy. the relevance of obama's candidate count of his earlier years as described in "dreams of my father" had already been thoroughly covered by the press,

including by salmon himself. why a week before election day were years-old quotes treated as a major breaking story on fair and balanced fox news? and i think the point is you have the head of news operations at a news network, whether you're liberal or conservative, if you're a journalist, your fundamental job is to seek out truth. and here you have somebody who's in charge of journalism at fox news admitting nonchalantly that he went on air and said the information to his audience he didn't believe was true. and that, i think, forms the core story of fox be. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week. nationally syndicated radio and former fox news host glenn beck argues that several issues are not getting the attention they need by politicians and the media in if "cowards: what politicians, radicals and the media refuse to say." in "twilight of the elites,"

christopher hayes, washington, d.c. editor of "the nation" analyzes why the public has developed such a distrust of authority. author rebecca s, the -- stott in darwin's ghost. in the o bam yangs, the struggle to redefine american power, former los angeles times reporter and foreign correspondent james mann explains how the president's administration created and implemented foreign policies. jacob laskin argues that the democratic party represents the rich and powerful in "the new leviathan. "in "america, you sexy bitch: a love letter to freedom," megan mccain and comedian michael ian black discuss their