Free Republic

TRENTON, March 25 - After countless newspaper headlines and snide pop-culture references about the misdeeds of New Jersey politicians, it has become conventional wisdom to assume that the state is controlled by a handful of self-interested political bosses. Many New Jersey political leaders insist that the reputation is undeserved and argue that the state's public servants are no more mercenary than their counterparts elsewhere. Still, decisions involving the intersection of politics, government policy and private interest are usually made so far from public view that there are few actual opportunities to watch government in action. A court fight in Burlington...

The Central Intelligence Agency might be the last place in Washington you'd expect political correctness to have taken root. But as Gabriel Schoenfeld demonstrates in a disturbing new article, "What Became of the CIA," in the March issue of Commentary magazine, the agency has turned into "a government bureaucracy like any other, its managers and employees preoccupied with endless reams of restrictive regulations and simultaneously caught up in many of the newfangled pathologies of the American workplace," including affirmative action programs. Is it possible that in its zeal to promote more women and minorities, the CIA compromised its own mission?...