Reading Recommendations: 2006-10-17

The first three links on this list point to Salon. You know the drill. The last is on the NY Times's site, and free.

• The real menace to American kids

  Bill Maher, making a guest appearance. A fine rant in his usual Politically Incorrect fashion, which may strike some as a bit over the top. Me, I like over the top in general, and Bill Maher in particular.
  
  

• Abramoff's "rock star"

  File this one under "surprise, surprise" if you will, but Mark Benjamin does a nice job of reporting. Hard as it may be to believe, current RNC head Ken Mehlman was seriously in bed with Jack Abramhoff when Mehlman was working in the Bush White House a few years back. The House Committee on Government Reform got right on the matter, and three or four years later, delivered a report. Benjamin summarizes it, focusing on an appendix detailing the email trail that proves that the name of the game is pay-for-play.
  
  

• Hillary is us

  The incredibly good Rebecca Traister takes some time out from her regular beat on "Broadsheet" to give a lengthy piece on feminist perspectives of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The article is complex and nuanced, so I hesitate to give a "money quote," but this phrase hints at Traister's understandably hesitant embrace and rock-solid analysis: "... what Hillary Clinton can offer the American left: unreliable, occasional, but intermittently effective action on behalf of the good guys." Definitely not for women only.
  
  

• The Vegetable-Industrial Complex

  A short essay from Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, reflecting on the lessons that should be learned from the recent spinach unpleasantness. Among other things, he makes a good argument for buying from local farms that doesn't require the reader to also have a fondness for Birkenstocks.