Unfortunately, Harper's never puts its current issue on its website, but the headline on its cover story is "Barack Hoover Obama," the premise of which is that Obama is blowing an opportunity to make radical changes with the support of the majority of the population. I haven't read the article yet, just the sub-heading, so I don't know if the author thinks that this failure is due to negligence or deliberate deception. Anyway, it's a nice change from the "Obama will make everything better" complacency that I see from my good-hearted but politically naive friends.

Another story is about on-going torture of prisoners and the corporate efforts to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act.

There's always at least one extremely worthwhile main article, the squibs are often fascinating, and the Harper's Index always contains an eye-opening bit of data or two.

and while the author is much more admiring of Obama than I would be, his points about Herbert Hoover are thought-provoking.

Hoover rose up from poverty, got lucky in his business and investments, and retired to a stellar career as a humanitarian prior to becoming president. I knew about his directing food relief in the aftermath of World War I and arguing for the lifting of indemnity assessments that were devastating and destabilizing Germany, but there was much more.

He also had a lot of good ideas for ending the Depression, including some that Roosevelt later implemented.

But he had a fatal flaw: a reluctance to confront the financial interests. The big money boys were able to strong-arm him. The most Hoover did to combat them was to get rid of the nastiest of the bunch, Richard Mellon (who was for letting everyone fail and starve in a social Darwinist way), by appointing him ambassador to Britain, but he let the rest talk him into being "reasonable" and "compromising."

Fascinating account, and I look forward to reading more of it.

I'll read the current issue in the library.
It used to be better in past years, imo, but it often does have an eye-opening article.
I love the Index and also "endnotes"