"Conservatism is true." That's what George Will told me when I interviewed him as an eager student many years ago. His formulation might have been a touch arrogant, but Will's basic point was intelligent. Conservatism, he explained, was rooted in reality. Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, the greatest conservative thinkers have said that to ...

Sex forges unlikely alliances and Hugh Hefner, who has been the world's most prominent personification of the unchained heterosexual male libido since his 1953 launch of Playboy magazine, forges unlikelier alliances than most. It's not only that the 85-year-old is looking forward to marriage later this month to Crystal Harris, a psychology major-turned-Playboy Playmate and aspiring pop singer 60 years his junior. For more than half a century, Hefner has succeeded in uniting social conservatives of the ...

With the Senate headed toward a final vote on an immigration bill this week, a leader of House conservatives is asking his colleagues to support a free-market plan aimed at bridging the gulf between the versions in the two chambers. The proposal by Rep. Mike Pence , provided to TIME ahead of an unveiling speech at the Heritage Foundation, is arguably less compassionate than the version being debated in the Senate and supported in principle by President ...

It came as something of a surprise last week when the Consumer Union, an independent, nonprofit organization, published a 623-page study that advocated complete legalization of marijuana as well as a nationwide methadone program . "Marijuana is here to stay," said the report. "No conceivable law-enforcement program can curb its availability." But American conservatives may have arched their eyebrows well above the hairline when they glimpsed the latest issue of William F. Buckley Jr.'s staunchly nonpermissive National Review. There on ...

The brothers Larijani — often referred to as the Kennedys of Iran — are emerging as a powerful counterweight to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from within the conservative camp. And unlike other Ahmadinejad rivals, the Larijanis are fully endorsed by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. The Aug. 15 appointment of Sadegh Larijani as head of Iran's judiciary puts Larijanis at the head two of the three branches of Iran's government. Older brother Ali Larijani is speaker of parliament. Over ...

Democrats are accusing Republicans of organizing "angry mobs" to disrupt town hall meetings across the country, but conservatives say the protests are a sign of the opposition to President Obama's health care plans. The Democratic National Committee released a Web video Wednesday charging that Republican operatives "have no plan for moving our country forward, so they've called out the mob." The video shows footage of angry constituents and protesters at recent events and then flashes pictures of Senate Minority Leader ...

The FBI, in a rare response to rampant rumors on the Internet, said it is not investigating Alaska Gov. Sara Palin on public corruption charges. "Normally, we don't confirm or deny those kind of allegations out there. But, by not doing so, it just casts her in a very bad light," said FBI Special Agent Eric Gonzalez, who confirmed for CNN the statement he made to the Anchorage Daily News. "There is just no truth to those rumors ...

There are signs that the ongoing protests against last week's presidential election results may be starting to divide Iran's conservative leadership. Iran's influential parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani on Thursday blamed the Interior Ministry for a bloody crackdown on civilians, including students at Tehran University, after Monday's protests. At least eight people died in the violence. Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi and his supporters have taken to the streets this week urging the government to dismiss the results that gave President ...

Some Iranian-Americans, watching the post-election unrest in Iran, say the tug-of-war between the people and their hardline government has come to a head after three decades. "I am absolutely convinced that what we are witnessing is a turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic," said Dr. Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City. "Even if the Islamic Republic survives this crisis, it will no longer be as it ...

It was billed as tragedy — an insurrection that would topple the Labour Party's flawed hero, Gordon Brown — but it played out like a Marx Brothers farce. The June 8 meeting that would determine Brown's fate attracted so many Labour MPs and members of the House of Lords that a House of Commons committee room quickly filled to capacity. And still they came, squeezing their way into the mass of bodies politic. When a clutch of tardy ministers ...