Adam B. Kushner

In Louisiana, the nation's most corrupt state, fraud is just good entertainment.

It's not just the Saints. After years of dysfunction, corruption, and racial tension, New Orleans is finally moving forward.

New Orleans fell in love with the Saints—and then the Saints fell in love with New Orleans.

Israel has often found itself asking the question, how much is a life worth? This week they asked it with a twist: how much is mere proof of life worth? A whole lot.

I never knew that a person could actually be bored to tears until I read Josh Neufeld's new graphic book about Hurricane Katrina. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge follows five real-life storylines in the lead-up to, and immediate aftermath of, the storm.

Nikita Khrushchev was the face of the Soviet Union for 11 years, yet to this day he is defined in the West by one image: banging his shoe furiously upon a U.N.

Critics of former president Bush's democracy-promotion agenda say he confused liberal ends (good government) with liberal means (elections). After all, leaders can use elections to perpetuate bad governments.

Neil MacFarquhar's new book does what every reporter aspires to: it sneakily delivers social science (history, anthropology, political theory) to the reader in the guise of a hack's memoir.

It's clear that predator drones are revolutionizing the way America fights battles: the flying robots, piloted from thousands of miles away, stand watch while soldiers sleep, kill terrorists from afar and patrol for 24 hours at a stretch.

It wasn't April Fool's Day when congressional Republicans (the authors of Capitol Hill's wartime "freedom fries") declared last month that America should emulate France.

There was an overmilitarization of U.S. foreign policy and too much focus just on areas with an imminent threat.

Iraq showed that the U.S. is better at breaking things then fixing them. A new unit aims to change that.

Alongside exports, employment and growth, the financial crisis is claiming a less-talked-about victim: political Islam. In Muslim countries worldwide, voters have begun turning their backs on Islamist and other values-based parties in favor of dry but competent economic technocrats.Take Turkey, where the religious Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered badly in local elections last month.

Once upon a time, Mexico was only an adjunct in the war on drugs, which Gen. Barry McCaffrey fought in his job as Bill Clinton's drug czar. The Vietnam and Desert Storm veteran used to see Latin America through the lens of Colombia, where he persuaded Clinton to initiate an aid program that helped topple the cartels.

The bible, theology scholar Bart D. Ehrman writes in his new book "Jesus, Interrupted," is offered as a sacred text in U.S. churches—not as a historical document.

Dan Baum's terrific new book, "Nine Lives," traces nine New Orleanians from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 through Katrina in 2005. What emerges is a portrait of an entire city in all its quirky, backward beauty.

Under George W. Bush power flowed away from the State Department, which never held the president's ear for long; and the Treasury Department, led by Sinophile Hank Paulson, took charge of China policy.

Not for the first time, Israeli voters gave a firm mandate to … none of their candidates. In the coming weeks, centrist Tzipi Livni and hawk Bibi Netanyahu will try to assemble a majority coalition and become prime minister.

Why we should nationalize troubled banks sooner rather than later.

As Israel's operation in Gaza extends into week four, critics have begun to compare the assault on Hamas to the messy 2006 war on Hizbullah in Lebanon. Israel's "massive retaliation" against Hamas rocket attacks is "bound to fail," wrote Steve Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, shortly after the conflict began.

James A. Baker III: Sad to say there are people in my party who regret the fact that we no longer have a big enemy out there.

The U.S.-backed war on drugs is failing, as coca traffickers stay one step ahead of Uribe.

Hurricane Katrina didn't just wreck 82-year-old Herbert Gettridge's home in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward; it leveled his entire world. The Frontline documentary "The Old Man and the Storm," which premieres on Jan. 6, chronicles Gettridge's defiant, solitary effort to rebuild the house he lost.

There will be no honeymoon for Barack Obama on the Axis of Evil. Though Obama campaigned on a promise to talk to American enemies whom George Bush had once shunned, including erstwhile members of his Axis of Evil—Iran, North Korea and Iraq—they responded by pre-emptively hardening their bargaining positions.

Allies may be dismayed to learn that President Obama can't turn American foreign policy on a dime when he takes office in January, say executive-power scholars.

America's allies got the candidate they overwhelmingly preferred, but that doesn't necessarily mean America's relationships with the globe will warm instantly.

Frustrated by illogical poll analysis, baseball statistician Nate Silver started modeling data on his Web site, FiveThirtyEight.com. He spoke to Adam B. Kushner last week.

Which way will a larger Democratic majority in Congress push Obama on foreign policy? The incoming "blue dogs"—electable centrists recruited by the Democratic Party for vulnerable districts—are likely to push a populist antiwar stand, urging Obama to draw down faster in Iraq than he might like.

The danger that the U.S.-India nuclear deal will break down the international nonproliferation regime seems to be growing. Critics warned that aiding a rising power that has spurned international nonproliferation treaties could inspire copycat violations—and they can now point to the latest China-Pakistan deal as proof.Beijing recently promised to help Islamabad build two new reactors, even though China is a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which bans nuclear trade with nations...

During the U.S. presidential debates, the word "immigration" was mentioned only once, odd for a time of steep job losses, when bashing foreign workers might normally sell.