IN THE July 11, 2016, ISSUE
The Incredible Shirking Congress
Legislators are running from the great duties they were meant to discharge.
Also In This Issue
Articles
The Constitution of Clarence Thomas
On administrative law and civil rights, the justice is leaving his mark.
Casualties of the VA
Over-prescription is making veterans dependent on pharmaceutical drugs.
He Calls Himself ‘Free Man’
Meet Jung Gwang-il, a North Korean defector who has found his life's work.
Features
The Incredible Shirking Congress
Legislators are running from the great duties they were meant to discharge.
Books, Arts & Manners
The Assault on Christians
Christian churches are under attack from the living Left, and the church walls might not prove as strong as they look.
Russia Moves Toward a Reckoning
What's in place today in Russia is a sort of secondhand Communism, a cast-off, almost a parody except that it is tragic.
Call to Arms
There is a dreary sameness to all too many conservative books. Pete Hegseth's new book comes as a tonic.
Friendship Capers
"Central Intelligence" is a more interesting vehicle, mostly because Kevin Hart's co-star is Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock.
A Green Thought in a Green Shade
Paradise Lost's description of Adam and Eve gardening before the Fall is the subject of much English-department mirth. If you're in Eden, why do you have to work at all?
Sections
Letters
Accentuate the Negative
Ramesh Ponnuru addresses a question that is probably not going to go away after this election, namely: What do you do when you decide you have to vote ...
The Week
‐ Now that Garrison Keillor is retired, he will probably spend most of his time propounding cranky political opinions and telling long, dreary stories.
‐ Since clinching the GOP nomination, Donald ...
From the Archives of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library:
The Collected Diaries of Donald J. Trump, Vol. 6: "Husky No More."
The Parable of the Sad Excavator
A transcript of a recent Trump speech had something that sounded like a children's parable.
Poetry
FIREBIRD
The Phan Rang fields first heard about my autumn birth
from helicopters hovering over Vietnam.
My father, nicely hidden from a hostile bomb,
was told through rasping speakers, on a crisping earth.
That news, ...
Sins of Omission
For nearly eight years, conservatives have inveighed against the liberal quest to euphemize Islamic terrorism out of existence.