Richard Hart

“Is sex dirty?” Woody Allen asks in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask. “Only if it’s done right.” But it’s also become dangerously political. We decided to do a sex issue to brighten up the calendars that go with our Summer Guide and to remind people that there’s […]

Years ago, when I was a working for United Press International, I was sent to cover the first Spanish Grand Prix. I knew little about auto racing so called an editor in London who filled me in. “It’s a big contradiction,” he said. “The cars are supposed to go fast as they can, and the […]

It was both refreshing and sobering to take part in the anti-war rally Saturday in Fayetteville–refreshing because it was valuable to be around so many people angry about the war, sobering because I know there are so many more people just as outraged who weren’t there. It’s fortunate that the war hasn’t yet directly touched […]

President Bush’s final–and most diabolical–lie in the campaign to justify the invasion of Iraq is that we are there to bring democracy. We are told this war is for the good of the Iraqi people, to pave the way for self-rule. But it’s the reverse of real democracy that the Bush administration has in mind–it’s […]

There’s a point early in Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis’ film The Take, which the Independent is sponsoring at showings in Raleigh, Cary and Durham next week, when Klein is on a “bobble-head” show–the name bloggers have for those Sunday morning gabfests. She is arguing against Argentine President Carlos Menem’s plunge into unfettered, free-market capitalism […]

When President Bush says that by privatizing two-thirds of your Social Security payments “with a conservative mix of stocks and bonds … your money will be able to get a better rate of return than the money inside the Social Security trust,” it’s a lie. When he says his budget proposal will cut the $400-billion-plus […]

Last week’s flurry-induced gridlock gave us more than brutal rides home and unexpected sleepovers. We got a rare glimpse into the future of the Triangle–or, at least, one scenario. But that’s where it looks like we’re headed. This was more than just the perfect storm of screw-ups by TV meteorologists, DOT road crews and over-anxious […]

Listening to the news this MLK weekend, it was hard not to wonder if you were in another time, another country. There was the sentencing of Spc. Charles Graner Jr., convicted of assault, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. It wasn’t until after he was […]