Tony Dokoupil

Frustrated by the federal stalemate on illegal immigration, cities and states have spent the last few years crafting their own curbs on unlawful residency.

According to a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Political Science, women are the most effective lawmakers in the land.

Secretaries of state have been among the more anonymous local officeholders, managing elections without taking a political side.

About one in five Americans smokes. And that's not likely to change much, say public-health experts, until cigarette-style taxes, bans, and crossbones are applied to a related scourge: smokeless tobacco. The unlit leaf of many names—chaw, chew, dip, snuff, snus—is a growing problem, especially among male smokers and young people who use it as a cheap and convenient substitute for cigarettes.

In 2006 the Census Bureau reported a sharp drop in interstate moves, and as mobility continued to slide in the recession, the new rootedness got prominent coverage.

As dozens of states "right size" their budgets, one line item seems curiously immune from cuts: film subsidies. After New Mexico approved generous tax credits in 2002, more than 40 states followed suit, and today studios are showered with about $1.5 billion in annual benefits.

Last year was among the worst on record for charitable giving. But even with a rebound forecast for 2010, the world of good works will remain unnaturally depressed, according to a new study, and not because of the economy. The culprit is Uncle Sam.

Republicans have pledged to roll back health-care reform in the name of fiscal restraint. But the cost of implementing the new law remains unclear, largely because of the human equation.

It's said there are no bad jobs during a recession. But there are depressing ones—like trying to recruit new business. That was Jeffrey Edwards's task as head of Utah's Economic Development Corporation (EDC).

Privatization is a magical idea, a way to shrink government without cutting services or raising taxes. But while there has been support for outsourcing the oversight of parks and tollbooths, one public monopoly hasn't folded: liquor sales.

Promising to "cut the fat" is often better politics than policy, as lawmakers pushing to consolidate school districts may learn. The idea calls for absorbing smaller districts into larger ones to reduce overhead costs and fund better student performance. But consolidation fails on both fronts.

Tea Partiers rail against taxes, deficits, and a government unmoored from its founding principles. But offered a chance to buck the system, would they grab it?

The average American can't answer basic questions about world religion, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, which prompted renewed calls for religious study in public schools.

Most financial reforms have focused on reining in Wall Street. But a new study by the American Sociological Review highlights what could be a more important regulatory target: civil rights.

It's the watchword of the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar push for education reform. But "accountability," the practice of tracking school performance, isn't always a force for good. It has been linked to a host of unsavory behaviors, including cheating on official exams and suspending poor students on test day. Now, according to a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there's an additional concern: teachers quitting.

New businesses are often tiny, of course, at least at first. But the distinction between them and small, mature firms is hardly semantic, says economist John Haltiwanger, who coauthored the study. His research suggests that the policy focus should skew young, nurturing the next big firms—which actually employ the most people—rather than tending an old crop of small ones.

There's no shortage of theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But such explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human nature.

Artifact theft is usually associated with developing or war-torn countries (think Iraq after the U.S. invasion). But in recent years America's own ancient sites have become a target, with looters pilfering Native American bones, jewelry, and even pictographs hacked out of cave walls, and selling them in thriving online markets.

Beauty can be its own glass ceiling.

It's conventional wisdom that anti-Washington sentiment threatens to scramble the midterm elections. But which incumbents should be most worried? And what, if any, hope is there for Democrats anyhow?

Ahead of the midterms, four local election commissions are considering crackdowns—the first of their kind—on how candidates and their campaigns handle online advertising and social-media sites.

In New York, many nonviolent incidents have landed kids in court. Last year, the state sent over 1,400 to correctional facilities, which recent reports suggest don't help.

Immigration reform has receded—at least temporarily—in Washington. But a historically fraught question is primed to return when legislators again pick up the matter: should English be America's official language?

To tell the story of how America's game gained Dominican flavor, Mark Kurlansky focuses on a single town: San Pedro de Macorís—the birthplace of All-Stars like Robinson Cano, Sammy Sosa, and Alfonso Soriano, and the home of more major leaguers per capita than anywhere in the world. More than one in four major leaguers are Latin-born (up from zero a half century ago), and no country has contributed a greater share of the talent than the Dominican Republic.

The nation's nursing shortage is sure to be exacerbated soon by an uptick in stitches and surgeries that, prior to health-care reform, many Americans likely would have gone without.

Next week President Obama is slated to deliver his first speech on the administration's NASA policy, which calls for transferring routine space travel to private companies.

As education secretary Arne Duncan begins his review of equality in the nation's schools—he recently called it the "civil-rights issue of our generation"—he may want to take a close look at North Carolina.

As the white house revives immigration reform—an issue the president is discussing with congressional leaders—it may want to ponder the effects of curbing foreign labor.

President Obama has called for a world without nuclear weapons. As he prepares to whittle down America's arsenal, however, a crucial question remains: what to do with the bomb material?

As President Obama looks to overhaul education policy, he might consider a simple fix: paying students for grades. Backed by private donors, hundreds of schools nationwide have tried a pay-for--performance approach in the last decade.