For better or worse, Dick Cheney redefined the role of the modern Vice President. By creating his own executive branch inside the Bush White House, he wielded power and influence that often usurped the President he served. Today Joe Biden inherits that office and himself has extraordinary power and influence, but he achieves it in a wholly different way; by partnering rather than competing with his President. His influence in the area of US foreign policy is profound and might be felt in the President's Af/Pack speech tomorrow night. The idea of Joe Biden as "the second most powerful Vice President in history" is the cover story of this week's New York Times Magazine by contributing editor James Traub.My conversation with James Traub:
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she argues that our current system for fighting crime and protecting the public is simply not working. We spend $200 billion annually fighting crime and there are over two million people currently incarcerated in America. Are we getting value for our dollars? The way Harris sees it, if we are going to be really effective, we must attack small problem long before they become big problem.
he gives us his insights into the birth of a this new political epoch. 
he pulls back the curtain on the most sordid elements of Japanese society. Very few Americans have ever come close to discovering what really goes on in Japan's most closed society. Adelstein's is a dark journey through the underworld of Tokyo vice and the Yakuza, as told by the only American journalist every to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club.