Joshua Green

A shocking photo of a young Barack Obama exposes his buccaneering tendencies. Only one GOP candidate is prepared for a duel. More »

They'd have caught Greg Mortenson in an instant. They can be daunting to encounter. They'll pick you apart like a defense lawyer. But they're wonderful to have around. More »

The tribulations of Tim Pawlenty More »

Turns out my manic fixation with silence while I'm writing is not just an odd personal foible (shared by many geniuses). It is a scientifically valid strategy for better performance, proven and endorsed by none other than Stanford psychologist Clifford Nass, who has studied the effects of rampant multitasking and how it turns you into a twitching, jabbering pile of mush. Here, via Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, is Nass on what he discovered in his studies of hardcore… More »

On Monday, the ratings agency Standard & Poor's changed its outlook on U.S. debt from "stable" to "negative," meaning it sees a one-in-three chance of a downgrade from AAA rating--a prospect that roiled the markets. Not everyone is worried; a few people sneered. But the news vindicated a handful of congressmen who have worried about the U.S. credit rating for years, none more loudly or insistently than Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a Blue Dog Democrat. Cooper… More »

The Donald has rocketed to the top of Republican presidential polls. But with prominence comes scrutiny of his business acumen. He's not going to like it. More »

Conor Friedersdorf just posted a great, thoughtful piece on why telecommuters work more efficiently in coffee shops: there are some, but not too many, distractions; it doesn't feel like work if you're out of the office; you can't stay forever, so the time pressure subtly encourages productivity. How I wish I could count myself among these fortunate souls! But I can't. Whether due to genetic predisposition or some obsessive-compulsive disorder or an awful curse, I… More »

Roy Moore, the "Ten Commandments Judge," is running for president. Will he have a five-ton granite runningmate? More »

Caliphates? SDS? Fish sticks? What it looks like when a talk-TV host goes off the rails, as measured by the tease headlines More »

An alarming number of readers missed that I was kidding when I said his "missing" birth certificate is an important story More »

As a young man he lived in a foreign country hostile to America. What is he hiding? More »

The GOP is heading to war over the debt ceiling. And that could really hurt the economy. More »

A footnote in the history of steroids, baseball, and the House Oversight Committee More »

Bob VanderPlaats wants to push the GOP field rightward on social issues More »

A new study reveals the carbon footprint of Cheech and Chong, and it isn't pretty More »

The path to Obama's birth certificate, as told by someone who's looked More »

Hey, elected officials--don't steal songs. The artist always wins. More »

It's the movement conservatives, not the tea partiers, who are driving the Planned Parenthood rider More »

Salon's Laura Miller is a terrific critic. So I'm sure she's correct in calling "Limitless," the new movie in which Bradley Cooper ingests a wonder drug and becomes a terrific writer, "deeply stupid." I don't care. I plan to see it anyway, purely as an exercise in fantasy--because writing is hard. And I've been bogged down with a big magazine piece. But I will be back to blogging, drug free, pretty soon. Thanks to those who have emailed to inquire about my… More »

The practical, purposeful tone is a striking contrast from the 2008 Obama--and a glimpse of how the upcoming campaign will differ from the last one More »