Call me a meat puppet, but I like my politics corporeal. Before the Internet, activism meant bodies in a room, arguing, scheming, flirting, drinking. Taking on a task, you made a commitment to people who could hold you accountable. The "movement" was a network of thousands of rooms, thousands of relationships.

One commitment you made was, literally, to move your body out of the room and into the street, voices and fists poised for raising.... Read more

The first clue came on a Saturday night, when a guy called from the fraud department of Dell Computer's credit arm, telling me a new account had been opened using my Social Security number and $3600 worth of equipment ordered. He noticed a suspicious overseas shipping address -- a red flag. The same day a similar email about a credit application arrived from amazon.com. That one had been denied.... Read more

Last summer I found myself sipping wine on a porch with a woman who had met William Rehnquist at a soiree in Greensboro, where the Supreme Court chief justice summers. "Bill" was lovely, she said, gracious, funny and "so brilliant!" How could anyone dislike such a person?... Read more

Depressed?" reads the front of the black T-shirt created by a group of Chicago theory wonks and upstarts called FeelTank. The back declares: "It's political."

Now, I'm not the world's cheeriest gal (I am an atheist Jew from Brooklyn, and for Vermonters unacquainted with my race, I'll mention that we suffer from congenital existential despair). But it's good to be reminded that this feeling I've been having since, oh, around November 3 is not just me. I mean, there are, objectively, more reasons to stay in bed than to get out. ... Read more

A minor seeking an abortion must show "she understands that some women have experienced severe remorse and regret" following the procedure. So wrote newly confirmed Federal Appeals Court Justice Priscilla Owen. It was 2000, and Owen was on the Texas Supreme Court hearing its first case under the state's Parental Notification Act. To be excused from telling her parents -- who might beat her black and blue -- the law required a pregnant teen to demonstrate she was "sufficiently mature and well-informed" to decide on her own.... Read more