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The play, which begins previews on Tuesday at the Public Theater, imagines a troubled moment in the American civil rights movement, when an act of intolerance leads to riots and hate crimes in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. Three black leaders try to rally their community, but their efforts are hampered not only by the K.K.K. and the F.B.I., but also by their own classism, infighting and vice.

“We had some people who had been interested in the play say that it wasn’t relevant anymore because Obama was doing well,” Ms. Wilson said.

At that, Ms. Tommy chuckled, threw up her hands and said: “We were like: ‘What? Because Obama’s doing well, there’s no more racism?’ ”

Leaning forward, Ms. Wilson began, “The idea of ‘postracial’ to me is —— ”

“—— a fantasy," Ms. Tommy interjected.

Ms. Wilson added: “An insane fantasy. Like a ‘Star Wars’ fantasy. Racism is not going to end just because we have a black president. Real equality will come when black people can mess up just like white people and still succeed, and when a flaw in a black leader is not looked at as a flaw in the black race."

A glad-handing force of nature to some and a press-savvy con artist to others, Christopher Janus cut a legendary swath through Chicago's art and business communities.

A big-picture guy in culture as in business, he led delegations of noteworthy Chicagoans to Athens for democracy conferences, to Persepolis in 1971 for the 2,500th anniversary of Iran's monarchy and to China shortly after it reopened to the West. Yet many detected something not quite straight about the Bache & Co. broker.

"We never knew what kind of stockbroker he was -- maybe he never actually was one. That would figure, too," says Universal Press Syndicate columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, a longtime friend. "I have myself always mistrusted people who don't have a touch of larceny."

In his perhaps most famous exploit, he undertook a globe-trotting detective mission to discover the whereabouts of Peking Man, fossils of primitive man discovered in China in the 1920s and 1930s. The fossils disappeared in mysterious circumstances during World War II, and Mr. Janus seemed hot on the trail. That was shortly before he was convicted of fraud for the loans he took out to finance the venture. The fossils remain at large.

As much as $25 billion in preferred shares held by the U.S. government will be converted into common shares as Citigroup struggles to stabilize itself following more than $37 billion in net losses during the past five quarters.

Depending on how many current holders of Citigroup preferred stock agree to a similar move, the company's tangible common equity could surge to $81.1 billion from $29.7 billion at Dec. 31. That would reverse the recent slide in tangible common equity -- a gauge of what shareholders would have left if the company were liquidated -- that fueled a downward spiral in Citigroup shares.

The conversion leaves taxpayers exposed to the risk of greater losses. The government's preferred holdings had stood ahead of common stock in Citigroup's capital structure, meaning they were less likely to lose value if the company's woes continue to mount. In addition, by converting much of the U.S. stake to common shares, Citigroup won't have to pay the hefty dividend payouts that were attached to the preferred stock.

The U.S. now owns about 36% of Citigroup.

The Government of Singapore owns around 11%.

The Kuwaiti government owns about 6%.

And a Saudi prince owns about 5%.royal

That totals some 58% owned by governments and foreign ty.

Freeman's real offense (and the president's if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. And how has he offended this tradition? By publishing and peddling the unabridged John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, with panegyric and hysteria. If Freeman believes that this book is the truth he can't be trusted by anyone, least of all Barack Obama. I can't believe that Obama wants to appoint someone who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some many of his supporters, me included.

 President Obama heads to one of the nation’s most storied military bases Friday morning to unveil plans to pull most troops out of Iraq by August 2010 and he has support from an unlikely quarter — Senator John McCain, the Republican he beat in last year’s election.

Mr. McCain and other Republicans emerged from a meeting with Mr. Obama at the White House on Thursday evening reassured that the president’s withdrawal plan is responsible and reasonable. After securing assurances from Mr. Obama that he would reconsider his plans if violence increases, Mr. McCain and the Republicans expressed cautious support.

In the industrialized world, most of us (except those who have septic tanks) rely on wastewater-treatment plants to remove our excrement from the drinking-water supply, in great volumes. (Toilets can use up to 30 percent of a household’s water supply.) This paradigm is rarely questioned, and I understand why: flush toilets, sewers and wastewater-treatment plants do a fine job of separating us from our potentially toxic waste, and eliminating cholera and other waterborne diseases. Without them, cities wouldn’t work.

But the paradigm is flawed (isn't it always?-Psota). For a start, cleaning sewage guzzles energy. Sewage treatment in Britain uses a quarter of the energy generated by the country’s largest coal-fired power station.

IN the far reaches of Shaanxi Province in northern China, in an apple-producing village named Ganquanfang, I recently visited a house belonging to two cheery primary-school teachers, Zhang Min Shu and his wife, Wu Zhaoxian. Their house wasn’t exceptional — a spacious yard, several rooms — except for the bathroom. There, up a few steps on a tiled platform, sat a toilet unlike any I’d seen. Its pan was divided in two: solid waste went in the back, and the front compartment collected urine. The liquids and solids can, after a decent period of storage and composting, be applied to the fields as pathogen-free, expense-free fertilizer.

Private capital has fled our nation’s markets not only because of loss, but because of fraud, corruption and the willful blindness of our legislators and regulators.  That capital, contrary to popular understanding, forms the foundation of our credit markets; fully 2/3rds of all lent and invested capital does not come from banks, but rather from private investors and sovereign funds.  Our stock market has collapsed not because of economic recession but because that capital has retreated overseas or into the mattress where it cannot be stolen by those on Wall Street through their willing and complicit enablers in Washington DC.

Without that capital available to fund our economy, which government is incapable of replacing, we will experience a depression greater than the 1930s.

Does not conservatism rest on the principle of the rule of law rather than the rule of man?  Do conservatives not argue daily for truth, justice, hard work and, as Ronald Reagan said, “rugged individualism”?  Is not the conservative movement supposed to be about full transparency in both government and finance, not layer upon layer of intentional obfuscation, deception and lies?

How did half of our nation’s population – the half that defines itself as conservative or moderate with conservative leanings – come to believe that it was ok to lie on a mortgage application?  To put together thousands of loans into securities that were so complex that the printed documentation spanned thousands of pages?  To sell a mortgage to a consumer knowing full well they could not pay.  To sell a security out the front door to a customer, while shorting it in the next room?

Check out the picture of Dodd's "cottage" (provided to me by Rennie), where he spends summers and which is looked after during the rest of the year by a caretaker. It's not exactly the humble tumbledown abode with a leaky thatched roof, a fireplace with peat thrown on it and donkey tethered outside that the Senator might like you to envisage.

The nearby village of Roundstone is a celebrity hangout. When he's there, the Sunday Times reported in 2007, he's likely to "rub shoulders with [RTE's] Pat Kenny, Bill Whelan of Riverdance, Lochlann Quinn, the former AIB chairman, and the singer Brian Kennedy".

Given the Irish property boom, a conservative estimate would be that the house would be worth approaching $1 million, and very possibly much more than that.

Dodd became part owner of the 10-acre Galway property in 1994 along with Missouri businessman William Kessinger, whom Dodd knew through investor Edward R. Downe Jnr, who had pleaded guilty the previous year to insider trading charges. The mortgage was listed as "between $100,001 and $250,000". Downe was a witness to Kessinger's purchase.

In 2001, Dodd circumvented the US Justice Department to help get his pal Downe a full pardon on President Bill Clinton's last day in office. The following year, Dodd bought off Kessinger's two-thirds share of the "cottage" for, Dodd said, $127,000.

Ever since then, Dodd has continued to list the value of the property as "between $100,001 and $250,000".

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud.

1. Increase savings and production. People need to start saving and paying down credit card debt, and the US needs to become a net producer and manufacturer of goods once again.

2. Vote no on all bailouts. Instead, the government should begin eradicating grotesque budget deficits and national debt by reigning in profligate spending.

3. Allow the recession to run its course and rebuild quickly from a fresh start. “Let it collapse today so it can prosper tomorrow.” To use a crude analogy, wildfires are devastating in the short term, but they are extremely beneficial in the long run for the entire ecology. Currently, the trillions of dollars of new government spending is akin to pouring gasoline on the fire. It will only serve to exacerbate the problem and delay meaningful recovery.

4. Let the free market operate without inefficient, ineffective, and cumbersome government involvement. The government should enforce the integrity of free markets, not manipulate them.

5. Drastically cut federal spending. It’s time to quit over spending and over borrowing and start living within our means.

6. Cut corporate and personal income taxes to spur savings, job growth, and real industrial production.

7. Minimize corporate regulation. If you allow the free market to operate, businesses and banks which accrue massive debt will fail. More efficient and fiscally responsible banks and institutions will prevail and restore prosperity to the economy.

8. Restore the value of the US dollar. Since 2002, the US dollar has been devalued by nearly 30%. Put a stop to the Federal Reserve setting artificial interest rates and printing trillions of dollars out of thin air. Instead, get the Fed out of the markets and bring back balanced budgets, low taxes, and robust production.

The Obama administration's tough rules about who it will hire and its increasingly rigorous vetting process are complicating Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's team-building efforts, government officials say, at a time when his agency faces a punishing workload brought on by the worst financial crisis in decades.

The delay leaves Mr. Geithner without many chief lieutenants while the Treasury is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to try to blunt the financial crisis -- and hustling to stay abreast of unfolding events. Mr. Geithner himself is taking on a bigger workload and relying on a skeleton crew of advisers, including some holdovers from former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's staff.

But even if the stimulus is a magnificent success, the money still has to be paid back. The plan of record apparently is that we keep borrowing, spending and stimulating, faster and faster, until suddenly, on some signal from heaven or Timothy Geithner, we all stop spending and start saving in recordbreaking amounts. Oh sure, that will work.

There is another way. If it's not the actual, secret plan, it will be an overwhelming temptation: Don't pay the money back. So far, even as one piggy bank after another astounds us with its emptiness, there have been only the faintest whispers about the possibility of an actual default by the U.S. government. Somewhat louder whispers can be heard, though, about the gradual default known as inflation. Just three or four years of currency erosion at, say, 10 percent a year would slice the real value of our debt -- public and private, U.S. bonds and jumbo mortgages -- in half.

The dolls in Phillis' new play are the means through which the viewer learns about their owner, an older gay man named Frank. Some of the dolls have been with Frank since his childhood; others are newer. They take on Frank's character traits - including a love of "CSI" and unhealthy snack foods - and they're all a little bit gay.

But while the dolls come to resemble their owner, and also follow the four doll rules - including "never let them see you move" and "even if you don't like the game, you still have to play" - they also have their own identities, independent of Frank. There's a caste system among them, and they deal with real-world issues like politics, war and civil liberties infringements.

"Once the idea had really (taken shape) ... it was almost like, wow, I can do anything with this idea," Phillis says. "And then right after that great realization, there was the, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do?"