As the Obama administration continues its efforts to stabilize the financial system, the question of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's relationship to Wall Street keeps reemerging. Is he too close to the bankers over which he now has to ride herd? As head of the New York Federal Reserve, was he...

A large part of the reason Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in last year's Democratic primary can be reduced to the fact that he mobilized his bottom-up network better than she mobilized her top-down one. So it was notable that even before formally taking over the State Department, Clinton named...

In 1854, John Snow, a British physician, turned his attention to an outbreak of cholera along Broad Street in London. Investigating the area where the outbreak was taking place, he noticed that the afflicted homes were clustered around a particular well. Although it was commonly believed that cholera was the...

The initial outrage over Rod Blagojevich's blatant attempts to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat has predictably moved into its second phase: Perhaps he's guilty of nothing more than politics as usual, merely taking to an uncouth extreme the sort of horse-trading and quid quo pro that has always been at...

It isn't clear yet exactly how much Bill Clinton will have to curtail his involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative as a result of Hillary's nomination to be Secretary of State. It's certainly no surprise that Bill would agree to whatever was necessary to further Hillary's trajectory. But there is...

The news that Tom Daschle will be nominated to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services is an interesting development for those tracking the shape of the new administration. Daschle alumni constitute their own cluster of critical mass within the Obama network; at least nine senior campaign advisers, many...

In the next few days, a writer will be elevated into the literary pantheon by the Swedish Academy, which will bestow upon him or her the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. The selection will most likely set off a flurry of commentary by the literati as well as handwringing by...

It turns out that the easiest way to be in the inner circle of Alaska state government is to have been a high school classmate of Sarah Palin. As a result, a former real estate agent ended up heading the State Division of Agriculture, a Mailboxes Etc. franchisee was...