"Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative...

In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the country were panic-stricken. Radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of chaos and fear, but the key players, Vice President Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and...

On Capitol Hill, members of Congress have been interviewing witnesses and investigating the treatment of detainees suspected of terrorism. This edition of the Journal summarizes those hearings and gets perspective from journalist Jane Mayer on the debate over whether the U.S. sanctioned torture to prosecute the war on terror. Mayer's recent book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, documents...