It is not every day that a concept car re-writes the rules of more than 100 years of motoring. In development for four years by a team of architects and engineers led by William Mitchell, former head of the school of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as part of his Smart Cities research group, a new MIT car is borne of a complete rethink of people's relationship with their cars in the ever-expanding cities of the future.

For all the hoopla over Barack Obama's post-Iowa bounce, in the end the Democratic primary in New Hampshire turned out to be surprisingly close. This is good news, and not just for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). It's good news for the voters in all the other states who haven't yet had a chance to express a preference

U.S. superiority, both tactically and strategically, is presumptive. Were the Iranians indeed to launch a Cole-style attack (seems unlikely to me, but there are undoubtedly some crazy folks in the Revolutionary Guard), the rest of the Iranian Navy would have a lifespan of several hours before facing destruction from USN missiles and aircraft. Indeed, this would be a perfectly appropriate response to an Iranian attack, and I'll call for it myself if such a thing ever happens. But it hardly makes sense to court war by shooting first.

Other cities - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston - are experiencing a steady decline of murders per capita and higher arrest and prosecution rates for those who perpetrate violent crime. They attribute their progress, in part, to something that San Francisco does not practice - accountable forms of community policing with targeted violence prevention programming.
Community policing is a comprehensive, neighborhood-based violence prevention and intervention practice that is carried out by law enforcement, city departments and community organizations. Coordinated resources are aimed citywide, but in high crime areas in particular. Foot patrol is only a small feature of community policing.

Freedom-of-speech folks — they come from both ends of the political spectrum — say it's a violent world, and movies that decline to comment on that sad fact are bad art. They will also point out that very few people who see films like "Death Sentence" feel compelled to take the law into their own hands. Some minds — dangerous minds — are like dry tinder. The right act of violence in the wrong R-rated movie can be all the spark such an individual needs. Of course, it also helps to live in a country where handguns are plentiful.

There are responsible owners who stick to designated trails as well as renegades who go “off trail” with grave consequences for animal habitat, fragile desert soils and historical artifacts. The real problem, however, is that the important decisions about where off-road vehicles can go are not being made by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which is supposed to protect these lands and regulate these vehicles, but by the owners, user associations and rural county officials who are under their thumb.

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

The law still needs major changes to bring out the best in all children. The process for rating troubled schools fails to reward incremental progress made by schools struggling to catch up. Its one-size-fits-all approach encourages "teaching to the test" and discourages innovation in the classroom. We need to encourage local decision makers to use a broader array of information, beyond test scores, to determine which schools need small adjustments and which need extensive reforms

Having lived in both the Middle East and the United States in the past four years, I can assure you that what looks good on paper in Washington looks less convincing on the streets of the Arab world. There people will tell you that the "ideology of the terrorists", or "resistance" as many put it, stems from big injustices that first need to be addressed. And many add that until Mr. Bush, and that unknown successor of his, grasp that, there will never be any progress towards a lasting peace.

Just about every pillar of long-term economic growth — wages, housing, consumer spending, and exports — is heading south or is poised to tip in that direction. Tax cuts for the wealthy and further deregulation will do little to reverse the situation, and could well exacerbate the coming economic downturn while further expanding the growing gap between the rich and everyone else in the United States. The Bush administration’s plans are clearly too little, too late.