Government & Politics

The first season of the HBO TV series The Wire is now out on DVD. Critic John Powers has a review.

Richard Viguerie is considered the "funding father" of the conservative movement. In the 1970s and 80s he pioneered direct mail political fundraising. He is a co-author of America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power. He now heads the organization American Target Advertising Inc.

The intersection of religion and politics was a subject of dispute this year when the question arose over whether Catholic politicians who support legal abortion should receive communion. McCarrick is the archbishop of Washington, D.C., and heads of the task force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians.

Suketu Mehta's new book is Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. It's an exploration of Mehta's hometown, where he returned after a 21-year absence. Born in Bombay, one of the world's most populous areas, Mehta still believes it's the city of the future.

Mehta now lives in New York. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Conde Nast Traveler and The Village Voice. He co-wrote a Bollywood movie called Mission Kashmir.

A new documentary from filmmakers Calvin Skaggs and David Van Taylor describes the emergence of evangelical Christianity as a powerful political force. With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right is being broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Van Taylor and Skaggs run the documentary company Lumiere Productions.

We remember fireman turned writer Larry Brown. He died last week. He was 53. At the age of 29, Brown decided to become an author, and taught himself fiction writing. He moved from short stories for motorcycle magazines to critically acclaimed works in literary journals to a novel, Dirty Work.

James Bennet is the former Jerusalem Bureau chief for The New York Times. He recently returned to the Middle East to cover the death of Arafat and the jockeying for power among the Palestinian factions.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle.

British journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge traveled across America to write their new book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America. The book examines the history of the conservative movement in the United States. Micklethwait and Wooldridge both write for The Economist.

Leigh's social-realist comedies depict British working class life. He begins work on his films without a script, piecing them together from improvisations with his cast. His latest film is Vera Drake about a working class woman in Britain in the 1950s who secretly performs abortions.

Mark Bowden's article about the 25th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage crisis will be featured in the December issue The Atlantic Monthly. On Nov. 4, 1979 a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage the entire American diplomatic team — which resulted in a 15-month international crisis that still has reverberations today. Bowden interviewed the former hostage-takers for his article.

Last week The New Yorker endorsed John Kerry for president. Hertzberg frequently contributes to the magazine's Talk of the Town section. He is also the author of Politics: Observations and Arguments, 1966-2004. Hertzberg was on the staff of The New Republic magazine for much of the 1980s. He also spent time in the White House from 1979 to 1981 as Jimmy Carter's speechwriter.

From January 2001 to February 2002 he was a special assistant to President Bush for economic speech-writing. He held the position during the Sept. 11 attacks and he is the man responsible for the oft-repeated Bush term "axis of evil." Frum is the author of the book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush.

Critic-at-large John Powers talks about last night's election coverage.

Reid is Rocky Mountain bureau chief for The Washington Post. Previously he was the Post's London bureau chief, and their Tokyo bureau chief. He is also an NPR commentator. His new book is The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy.

Critic at large John Powers reviews The Battle of Algiers about the Algerian struggle for independence from the French in the '50s and '60s. The film was made nearly 40 years ago, and has a score by Ennio Morricone. It's just come out on DVD.

Stanford linguist and author of Going Nucular Geoff Nunberg discusses the word entrepreneur.

Dan Seligson is an editor at the Election Reform Information Project (electionline.org), a nonpartisan organization. He'll discuss their recent report, "Election Preview 2004: What's Changed, What Hasn't and Why."

David Margolick, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, co-authored the investigative article in the October issue of the magazine, "The Path to Florida: What Really Happened in the 2000 Election. And What's Going On Right Now." For the article, Margolick talked to some of the Supreme Court law clerks working at the time of the decision in the 2000 presidential election.

The 'Philadelphia Inquirer' is running a 21-day endorsement of Sen. John Kerry, outlining 21 reasons why voters should elect him president. Editorial page editor Chris Satullo and commentary page editor John Timpane talk about the endorsement. On the paper's op-ed page, they've invited guest commentators to write about the reasons why voters should elect Bush instead.