Behind the Swine Flu Emergency
Kent Sepkowitz is an infectious disease specialist in New York City. He has contributed to The New York Times, Slate, and, oh-so-briefly, O Magazine. He also writes academic medical articles that are at times pretty tough sledding.
By declaring H1N1 a national emergency, Obama's made it political-which is a shame, says infectious disease specialist Kent Sepkowitz. What we should really be talking about is how to get vaccinated for an even more deadly pandemic.
Feds on a Terror Tear
Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security. She is a frequent writer, commentator, and lecturer on terrorism, the US courts and the war on terror, global counterterrorism, and detainee issues.
Francesca Laguardia is the Director of Research at the Center on Law and Security. Francesca worked at the Center as a researcher for over four years before joining the staff full time. She has a J.D. from New York University School of Law and is currently working on her dissertation for a Ph.D. from the Institute for Law and Society at New York University.
As an al Qaeda suspect is charged, The Daily Beast crunches the feds' track record: Hype is down, and convictions are way up.
The Creeping Homegrown Threat
Steve Emerson is Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of 5 books and countless articles on terrorism. His most recent book is Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.
The arrest of seven North Carolinians on conspiracy charges shows, says Steve Emerson, how the U.S. is becoming like Europe, where homegrown terror plots get stopped-or not-seemingly every week.
Will Obama Stumble Like Ford?
Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s and is completing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books.
As he figures out how to react to the swine flu, President Obama should look toward Gerald Ford, who had his own harrowing battle with the flu in 1976. It didn't go so well.
First Day Out of Prison
John Forté is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and producer from Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, he is a classically trained violinist who is known for his work with The Fugees. Forté was granted a commutation by President George W. Bush in 2008 after having served more than seven years of a 14-year federal prison sentence for a drug offense.
After seven years in captivity, musician John Forte walked free last month when George W. Bush commuted his 14-year sentence. In a Daily Beast exclusive, Forte writes about greeting his mom, playing music with his old friends, and the new taste of freedom.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Gerald Posner is The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter. He's the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
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