If you live in Wisconsin, then… sorry? What were we going to write about here… ah, yes: if you live in Wisconsin, then you should go see Sarah Palin speak tonight! She will be making an appearance in Milwaukee on behalf of Wisconsin Right to Life, presumably the anti-capital punishment outfit up there. Only caveat: you cannot bring anything to this event. Anything at all. After tonight, Sarah Palin would like there to be no proof that she was ever in Milwaukee. (And maybe she isn’t!) MORE »

‘Sup, readers? So many lectures and books this week, it’s like the platonic ideal of college before college actually started all over again. And speaking of late-adolescent fixations: there’s Malcolm Gladwell and also Howard Zinn talking about his new documentary, A People’s History of Howard Zinn, a stunning expose in which we, America, find out Zinn cruelly inflected all of the world’s First Peoples with bird flu, for laughs. Ninth grade AP US History will never be the same. MORE »

Back when he was a young pup, Barack Obama went to college. Some of his former classmates remember he was a supernice guy who stood up to menacing bums; others say he was aloof; and still others ask, “Barry who?” Such was the wonderful enigmatic palimpsest of Barack Obama back in the days when he wore “$5 military-surplus khakis and used leather jackets” and roomed with some guy who later became a loser due to his cocaine addiction. MORE »

If you can’t make it over to Nathans, you can turn on your “web browser” and watch departing SecDef and all-around pariah Donald Rumsfeld deliver his Victory Address to Kansas State University. MORE »