Three cheers for Slate and people who get the new issue as soon as Barnes & Noble does, or even before! Bidisha Banerjee ("In Other Magazines") on the Lonely Uncle Sam issue:

Jeffrey Goldberg [my link] has a piece about Steve Rosen, a former top lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who faces indictment for spilling classified information about Iraq to an Israeli diplomat. In his first interview since leaving AIPAC, Rosen denies that he was spying for Israel; if he'd been given information that might help save the lives of British or Australian soldiers, he says, "I'd have tried to warn them by calling friends at those embassies." … Agonizing about whether to tell his daughter about the death of her pet fish prompts Adam Gopnik to ruminate about consciousness and the plot of Hitchcock's Vertigo. He writes, "We begin as small children imagining that everything could have consciousness—fish, dolls, toy soldiers, even parents—and spend the rest of our lives paring the list down, until we are left alone in bed, the only mind left."—B.B.