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Everyone lusts after stories of bad mothers—the worse, the juicier. As you might recall, in the late 1990s, at the peak of the Clinton-era culture wars, a moral panic arose over ''dumpster'' or ''toilet'' babies—infants abandoned by panicked, often teenage moms who had told no one they were expecting a child. In the spring of 1997, the nation was ...

It's heartening to hear that Janet Napolitano is most likely Obama's pick as secretary of Homeland Security. I profiled Napolitano for The American Prospect in July and spent some time with her in Phoenix. She's really smart, tough, and funny, dropping Monty Python lines in official meetings. A cabinet with both Napolitano and Hillary Clinton in ...

With a very serious op-ed on financial regulation in last Sunday's Washington Post, Eliot Spitzer clearly sees the economic crisis as an opportunity to rehabilitate his reputation, trotting out some pretty powerful ''I told you sos'' from his New York state attorney general days. Spitzer says he rang the warning bell about subprime mortgages and ...

Yes, the Bill factor is irritating. But this story about forced abortion in China reminds me why it might be pretty neat to have Hillary as secretary of state—despite Emily, Hanna, and Melinda's convincing articulations of Clinton fatigue. Arzigul Tursun is a Muslim Uighur woman living in rural western China. A mother of two, Arzigul and her ...