The scope of presidential power is the most urgent and the most ignored legal and political issue of our time.

Who Cares About Executive Supremacy?

The Beacon fiasco gives a good outline of what future conflicts over the Internet will look like. Whether a system is opt-in or opt-out has an enormous influence on how people use it. He who controls the “default option” — the way a program runs if you don’t modify it — writes the rules.

We used to live in a world where if someone secretly followed you from store to store, recording your purchases, it would be considered impolite and even weird. Today, such an option can be redefined as “default” behavior. The question is: Why would it be? The price in reputation for overturning this part of the social contract is bound to be prohibitively high.

For the owners of social-networking sites, it may be a price worth paying.

Well?

Intimate Shopping

In the season of gift-giving, the ratio of books bought to books read tilts heavily toward the bought.

Such gifts carry with them a whiff of self-congratulation, as well as flattery. They say: I’m smart, and I think you are, too.

Sometimes the idea of the book — and its physical presence — is as important as content. “I think they become features in the intellectual landscape,” said Alberto Manguel, author of “A History of Reading” and “Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey: A Biography,” out this month. “You don’t need to climb it or visit it, you just need to know it’s there.”

Remembrance of Things Unread

Waiting, scrimping, taking stock: This is the vernacular of the moment for a nation reckoning with the leftovers of a real estate boom gone sour. From the dense suburbs of northern Virginia to communities arrayed across former farmland in California, these are the days of pullback: with real estate values falling, local governments are cutting services, eliminating staff and shelving projects.

Families seemingly disconnected from real estate bust are finding themselves sucked into its orbit, as neighbors lose their homes and the economy absorbs the strains of so much paper wealth wiped out so swiftly.

This Is the Sound of a Bubble Bursting

Kaleidoscopic ... and the New Middle Ages ...

“That’s how the city rolls right now.”

The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.

The government has made only the most halting steps toward rapprochement with the Awakening groups, even those who have been fighting insurgents for months in their neighborhoods.

In interviews with more than a dozen sheiks in the province, along with police officers, local leaders and imams, not one expressed any trust in the government of Prime Minister Maliki.

And for the Americans who helped create and nurture the movement, the initial excitement has been tempered by the challenge of managing a huge, and growing, force where many of the men have shadowy pasts.

The Awakening groups in just their area of southern Baghdad could not seem to get along: they fought over turf and, it turned out in this case, one group had warned the other that its members should not pay rent to Shiite “dogs.”

The Awakening movement, a predominantly Sunni Arab force recruited to fight Sunni Islamic extremists like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has become a great success story after its spread from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province to become an ad-hoc armed force of 65,000 to 80,000 across the country in less than a year. A linchpin of the American strategy to pacify Iraq, the movement has been widely credited with turning around the violence-scarred areas where the Sunni insurgency has been based.

But rivalries and sectarianism are still undermining the Americans’ plans. And in particular, the Awakening’s rapid expansion — the Americans say the force could reach 100,000 — is creating new concerns.

In a Force for Iraqi Calm, Seeds of Conflict

To be sure, there were plenty of instances in which American officials did less than they could have. Diplomats or politicians intent on preserving the relationship with Pakistan for other strategic reasons (its help in the Cold War and then the war on terror) downplayed evidence of its nuclear chicanery for fear that any revelations would undermine cooperation.

The most egregious case involved Richard Barlow, a young CIA analyst who figures prominently in all three books. Barlow defied the cautious dissembling about the Pakistani nuclear program that was the official line -- and then was run out of the CIA for calling the intelligence as he saw it. In another instance, the State Department apparently intervened to downplay the potential proliferation implications of a smuggling trial. Customs officials also repeatedly failed to ask questions that would have quickly led them to realize what Khan and his operatives were up to.

But despite such missed opportunities, what becomes clear in these books is that the United States at various points drew on most of the tools it had to influence Pakistan, and none of them had much effect on its nuclear ambitions.

'The Nuclear Jihadist', 'Deception', 'America and the Islamic Bomb'

I was 8 when my family moved to Bethlehem in 1949. We were Muslim refugees from the newly created Israel. Back then, nearly all the townspeople were Christian. I went to a Christian school and sang in a church choir. I loved to go to Sunday service and shut my eyes, listening to the cadences of Latin Mass--which I didn't understand--and breathing in the fragrance of incense.

Back then, "Christian" and "Muslim" were labels we kept in our pockets. It didn't matter what religion you belonged to. It was common for us Muslims to attend Sunday Mass, since we honor Jesus and Mary, or, as we call them in Arabic, Issa and Miriam.

Postcard: Bethlehem

Sebastian Junger:

A strategic passage wanted by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley is among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S. forces. One platoon is considered the tip of the American spear. Its men spend their days in a surreal combination of backbreaking labor—building outposts on rocky ridges—and deadly firefights, while they try to avoid the mistakes the Russians made. Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington join the platoon’s painfully slow advance, as its soldiers laugh, swear, and run for cover, never knowing which of them won’t make it home.

Into the Valley of Death

Louis Menand:

Everyone acts superior to lists (so arbitrary and invidious!), but the act is a bluff. The fact of the matter is basic and ineluctable: we need these lists. The year would not be complete without them. The year would not make sense without them.

Best of the “Best”: The New Yorker

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area - posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.

Teens and Social Media