On the American Legislative Exchange Council, a D.C. nonprofit with a library of more than 800 pieces of fill-in-the-blank legislation ready for state legislatures across the country.

Walter Isaacson’s book is long, dull, often flat-footed, and humorless. It hammers on one nail, incessantly: that Steve Jobs was an awful man, but awful in the service of products people really liked (and eventually bought lots of) and so in the end his awfulness was probably OK.

On the last weekend of April 2011, two things happened in Washington D.C.: the annual White House Correspondents Dinner and the decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound. This is the story of how both transpired.

On the mid-sixties birth of America’s underground newspaper movement and the rise of The Realist, East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, and more.

Adam Wheeler lied on his college application. Lawrence Summers facilitated the destruction of the global economy.

Only one of these Harvard men was given jail time.

In the late 90s, an American man adopted a 5-year-old from the Ukraine. A decade later, one of the two would be accused of molesting young boys. The other would be charged with murder.

On Enrique of Malacca, “the closest thing there is to a hero in the story of Ferdinand Magellan’s horribly botched attempt to circumnavigate the world.”

The subject of a child research experiment tries to get to the bottom of what happened to her.

Members of the multiplicity community say they are many different people–sometimes so many they think of themselves as a city–all existing within one body.

A review of Treme, the new HBO show about post-Katrina New Orleans from David Simon, creator of The Wire. “The series virtually prohibits you from loving it,” Franklin writes, “while asking you to value it.”

Jillian Lauren, wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, grew up middle class and now lives in a three-bedroom house in L.A. In between, she was a part of a royal harem in Brunei.

The second installment of the Gaile Owens story. A former churchgoing mother of two from suburban Memphis, Owens is the first woman to be given the death penalty in Tennessee in nearly 200 years.

Job Cohen, the current mayor of Amsterdam, is leading the Dutch race for Prime Minister on a platform of racial integration that could transform the relationship between European politics and immigration.

Not long ago, Rand Paul, opthalmologist and son of Ron, would have been written off as a wacky extremist. Thanks to his Dad and the Tea Partiers, he’s poised to become the most radical member of the U.S Senate.

This isn’t truck-on-truck violence. It’s the taxpaying owners of brick-and-mortar restaurants—along with a host of other powerful District players—who are waging the attack.

If Annie Leibovitz sold her work through the traditional channels of the art world, she would have amassed a small fortune. But at the tail end of a career that has snubbed art galleries and collectors, she is destitute.

How did a Kentucky entrepreneur, a Louisiana politician, and the vice president of Nigeria end up in one of the biggest scandals to hit America’s black elite in decades?

In the aftermath of a mysterious murder, exploring a part of the story that has received little attention: the young man who lost his life.

A look at the legislative lobbying efforts of Michael Bloomberg’s $7 billion-per-year company. While the mayor has no specific day-to-day role at Bloomberg LP, he maintains “the type of involvement that he believes is consistent with his being the majority shareholder.”

A profile of Jack Dorsey, co-founder (and displaced CEO) of Twitter. Dorsey’s latest venture, a mobile credit card system called Square that only officially launched in February 2011, already processes more than a million transactions per day.

On who will bear the burden of the financial crisis facing cities across America. “Will it be articulated in terms of bond defaults or larger kindergarten classes—or no kindergarten classes at all?”

“Will you show me all of the man-in-the-street, sympathetic, mayoral candidates? The last time I met one of them on the subway was a long time ago. Let’s not get too carried away.”

“They cruise the city in chauffeured cars, blasting rap, selling pot to classmates. How some of New York’s richest kids joined forces with some of its poorest.”

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman entered the University of Texas at Austin’s Main Building. Armed with a number of rifles, he proceeded to kill 14 people and wound 32. Among them was a pregnant Claire Wilson.

A journey through Venezuela, once the richest country in South America, but now collapsing under the weight of the world’s highest rates of inflation and violent crime.