Sarah Palin isn’t the only person cashing in on her ill-fated bid for the vice-presidency. A whole slew of authors, fashion designers, movie producers, pornographers, cartoonists, and opticians are riding the Palin gravy train. So I was not surprised when a press release landed in my inbox plugging what seemed to be the latest category of Palin profiteer: Academics.

The University of Alaska Southeast is now touting one of their political science professors, Clive Thomas, as a one-stop Sarah Palin expert. He has been hitting the speaking circuit, with recent stops ranging from Utah to Brazil, and upcoming gigs in San Francisco and Chicago. His talks, according to the university, touch on numerous aspects of the "Palin Phenomenon," including "the enigmatic fascination with Palin, the contrast between those who like her and those who do not, and what she tells us about American politics." He also "introduces audiences to 'Alaska in myth and reality' including some Alaska political traits-populism, anti-tax and anti-government, especially anti-federal government and how Palin fits in Alaska." At least happy customer, Oregon State Political Science Chair Bill Lunch, reports: "I will now watch her future career moves with an insight I didn't have before this lecture." Is Thomas the world's first professional Palinologist?

Not if he has anything to do with it. “I study Sarah Palin by default,” says the affable, British-accented professor who has been teaching for nearly three decades. Despite the apparent publicity-mongering of his university, Thomas, who has a Ph.D. in political science from the London School of Economics and has been awarded four Fulbright fellowships, seems to be standing in the limelight very reluctantly. He explains to me, with a sigh, that while he has written several books on Alaska politics and has taught the subject for decades, he actually specializes in Latin America. (His recent trip to Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile was for research, not just lecturing.) And--surprise, surprise--he seems to be just as sick of Palin as we are.

I don't know how many head-of-state nut cases arrived in New York for the annual meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. But surely there are many others besides Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muamar Gaddafi. There is a class of rulers from Africa, for example, who govern recklessly in behalf of themselves but under the cover of one or another form of millenarianism. (The brutal clowns of South America are a bit different. They still believe that Fidel Castro is a model for building the good society.) This is, I suppose, the revenge of ideology over the London School of Economics.

This Saturday afternoon, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, the time for ideological issue training had arrived, and a breakout session on climate change was packed. An organizer in a long black skirt swept through and instructed people to move their chairs to the side, like her father’s Baptist congregation would do when space got tight.

"It’s already warmer in here, all the CO2 in the room," chuckled a tall, suited attendee.

"This is a hot topic!" cracked another.

Earlier this week, Thomas Wire of the London School of Economics published a study concluding that improved family planning is one of the most effective methods of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions we’ve got.

Give the White House credit. Amid signs that the recession is ending, administration officials are resisting what must be an enormous temptation to gloat. “I think we’re certainly on track to, at least, stabilizing the patient,” said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis during a recent cnbc appearance. But “[t]he patient is still sick.” It’s hardly a triumphalist metaphor.

The price of the September 14 elections in Bosnia was not simply that ethnic cleansers were legitimized; it was, more mundanely, that ethnic cleansers were elected. Though Radovan Karadzic was not voted into office (indicted war criminals were not permitted to run), his ideas were. All three ruling parties--Serb, Croat and Muslim--spent the election "campaign" cracking down on opposition candidates, obstructing the media, stomping out free expression and blocking refugee repatriation.

From the Editors: February marks the thirty-eighth anniversary of President Nixon’s landmark visit to Beijing, and, back in 1972, TNR was one of the few media outlets able to get a first-hand report from the trip. John Osborne’s report, “Mission to China,” provided a snapshot of a country far removed from the modern economic power it is today. “China, feared though it has been and mightier now than it has ever been before, is still a poor country and, in the scales of world power, a weak country,” Osborne wrote.