Over the past 40 years, the Review has done what one would expect of an alternative journal: expose evil, support justice, challenge conventional thought, and scoop the regular press by at least five to ten years on average. It has also tried to follow the dictum of Harold Ross, the first editor of the New Yorker: "If you can't be funny, be interesting." Here are a few moments along the way.

1964

The Idler begins publication. Although there will eventually be over 400 underground publications in the US, the Idler has only a few models such as the Texas Observer, the Carolina Israelite, the Village Voice and Paul Krassner's Realist. . . The first issue contains a series of letters from civil rights activist Gren Whitman in Mississippi during the critical summer of 1964.

1965

The 27-year-old editor, raised on Cold War liberalism, just off Coast Guard duty and still in the active reserve, struggles with Vietnam, where a friend has recently died: "The public must be made to understand the necessity of the undramatic, sufficient, and lengthy application of American force in South Vietnam."

From the same issue: "We sent a classified ad up to the Saturday Review of Literature not so long ago and got back a reply which said, in part, 'After careful consideration, our Acceptability Board came to the conclusion that it would prefer not to run your ad." We had hoped that the Saturday Review would be able to find a little space for us amongst their other ads concerning Sell’s Famous Liver Pate, WBAI-FM, exotic tropical fruit, work for an ex-convict, sex education records, and a private party wishing to buy Horatio Alger books. So we called them up to find out what was wrong. Nothing wrong with the ad, the lady told us. 'The board just decided your magazine was a little too liberal.'"

"It might be possible to abolish the profession of ghostwriting altogether if a federal law against plagiarism were passed. . . And ghostwriters could be prepared for new lives under the Manpower Retraining Act. But we realize this isn’t too practical and so offer a typical legislative compromise - a labeling bill. Under it, speakers and authors would be forced to disclose the true origin of their material and the names of ghostwriters would be listed with those of their candidates on all ballots." A year later the editor will marry a ghost writer and assistant press secretary to Senator Gaylord Nelson.

The Idler devotes an issue to the Civil Rights Commission's investigation of Mississippi.

The Idler starts running columns by Charlie McDowell of the Richmond Times Dispatch, later a familiar figure on PBS. Also: cartoons by Hugh Haynie of the Louisville Courier Journal and the musings of Lorelei, a cantankerous columnist living in Federalsburg, MD, with her cat, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Also: poems by Antoni Gronowicz, who will later write about a dozen books including a biography of Greta Garbo; the first of several articles by Jim Sterba who will go on to cover Vietnam for the NY Times and become foreign editor of the Wall Street Journal; and the first of several articles by Peter Jay who will go on to cover Vietnam for the Washington Post.

The editor is offered a job as assistant to James Reston, Washington correspondent of the NY Times. He brazenly turns Reston down, recommending instead James Sterba who takes the job. Later, he will also turn down a job offer from the Washington Post, preferring to continue his experiment in alternative journalism

1966

The editor takes part in a day-long SNCC boycott of DC Transit buses, giving rides to boycotters along the Benning Road route. Some 130,000 people stay off the buses that day. After his article on the action appears, the editor is visited by the local chair of SNCC who is seeking help with public relations. Thus begins a long relationship with Marion Barry, who will later describe him as one of the first whites who'd have anything to do with him albeit much later telling another reporter, "Sam's a cynical cat."

The Idler publishes the first of several poems by Thomas Whitbread, who will be later featured in the New Yorker and elsewhere.

Encouraged by Rev. Bob Smith, a Presbyterian minister trained in the Alinsky school of organizing, the editor starts publishing a community newspaper called the Capitol East Gazette, serving a neighborhood that is 75% black and mostly poor (with the exception of a restored area near the US Capitol). The Gazette is critical of plans to build a huge network of freeways in DC and provides coverage of the war on poverty, public education, neighborhood battles, and urban planning. The paper is aided by a $2,000 grant from a local Lutheran Church.

March: "We must learn the limits of a realistic American role [in Vietnam] and not exceed them."

April: "Perhaps it is not too late to salvage our position in Vietnam, but if we are to do it there are going to have to be some fairly dramatic changes made . . . The overriding fact of the Vietnamese war is that neither we nor the South Vietnamese are doing a good job at it."

June: "[LBJ's] Vietnam escapade has been an abject failure."

1967

April: "If we pursue the war to ultimate military victory, which appears the present goal of our government, we shall have surrendered reason and justice to the temptations of brazen power. We may defeat the communists, but we shall have also defeated ourselves."

November: "It seems almost inevitable that extraction from the mess of SE Asia or of our cities will not come without vehement, even violent, confrontation, Those willing to risk that confrontation on behalf of those less bold are more to be honored than censured." The same issue contains an article by Howard Zinn defending radical protests against the napalm-maker, Dow Chemical. The editor has become a full-winged dove.

After the editor writes an article headed, "Keep the Seat, Baby," he is invited to meet with Chairman Adam Clayton Powell, soon to be expelled from Congress, at his congressional office. At the morning session, Powell opens the largest office bar the editor has ever seen, explaining, "This, Sam, is what comes of serving the Lord."

The last issue of the Idler is published in December.

A photographer calls the Gazette to complain that a photo the paper had been sent by a community group was run without credit. He explains in an agitated fashion that he is a poor black dropout working in a car wash and that the Gazette has done him wrong. The editor explains how to progress as a photographer: "Go and get yourself a fucking rubber stamp that reads 'Credit Roland Freeman, Photographer, All Rights Reserved' and you stamp every photo you take with that stamp and then you'll be a real photographer and I won't print anymore of your frigging photos without giving you credit." A few weeks later, Freeman becomes photo editor of the Gazette. Later, he will win a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, become an associate of Magnum, a nationally known photographer and an expert on African-America quilting.

The Gazette proposes local bikeways.

The Gazette switches to offset printing, an inexpensive new technology that will encourage the flourishing of underground papers in the late Sixties. Type is set by an IBM Executive or Selectric typewriter, with all corrections cut out with razor blade and then scotch taped into place. Headlines are rubbed on letter by letter using Presstype.

The Gazette features a profile of a young community police officer, Ike Fulwood. Fulwood will later become Chief of the Metropolitan Police. Another young cop visits the Gazette from time to time. 9th Precinct patrolman Don Graham will later publish his own paper, the Washington Post.

1968

Riots break out in Washington. Two of the four major riot strips are in the Gazette's circulation area. The riots do more than $3 million worth of property damage in the community. In the vicinity of H Street some 124 commercial establishments and 52 homes are damaged. Another 21 businesses are damaged on or near 8th Street, although the Gazette office, just down the street from an oft-looted Safeway, is untouched. At the time of the riot nearly 25% of the labor force in Capitol East is either unemployed, earning less than $3,000 a year or employed only part-time. Over half of all adults living in the east part of the neighborhood have eight years or less schooling. Over a quarter of the housing units in the area are listed by the census as dilapidated or deteriorating.

Harry Lunn - owner of a photographic art gallery, a former CIA agent and a Gazette advertiser - tells the editor that if his store is torched he will burn down the editor's house. Another advertiser, Len Kirsten of the Emporium is more gentle. Asked by a customer whether the Gazette stacked on the floor isn't a Communist paper, Len replies, "No, the editor is a Communist, but the paper isn't."

THE EMPORIUM, OWNED BY LEN KIRSTEN (IN BLACK HAT)

CAPITOL EAST GAZETTE, 1968
RED STAFF CAR AT LEFT

1969

Gazette starts running the cartoons of Ron Cobb.

Gazette proposes neighborhood councils similar to the ones the city will get in 1974.

First issue of the DC Gazette, a citywide alternative newspaper concentrating on such issues as the war, progressive politics, freeways, DC self-government and urban planning.

1970

The editor becomes co-plaintiff in the first of seven public interest law suits, of which three will be successful. This one involves the overcharging of fares by DC Transit. Twenty years later, bus riders will be awarded a $10 million settlement.

The editor gets tired of his wife complaining about the lack of an arts section in the Gazette. Tells her: "If you want an arts section why don't you go out and get one." Within a couple of weeks she comes back with critics Joel Siegel and Tom Shales. In a few months, the Gazette has its own arts section later called the Washington Review of the Arts.

It is this sort of indefinable assistance - along with her articles, layout skills and ability to get things done - that leads the editor's wife to be listed on the masthead as Editor's Wife. . . until feminist staff members declare it not funny.

Tom Shales writes a column on the Washington Post in which he says, "Of course, the Post is so riddled with flaws and shortcomings, it is hard to know where to start, and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't. From its snobbishly inadequate under-coverage of the District itself, to the helter-skelter disorganization of national and international news within the paper, the Post is a compendium of journalistic ambiguity and short-shifts to the community one assumes it is supposed to serve." Shales will later be hired by the Post, eventually becoming its TV critic, but will for sometime continue writing his Gazette column under the pseudonym of Egbert Sousé . . . until he is discovered and ordered to cease.

Editor writes an article explaining how DC could become a state without a constitutional amendment. Total reaction: one reader sends in $5 for the cause. Later that summer editor writes a piece calling for the creation of a new third party. In the fall the two ideas serendipitously come together as the editor and others form the DC Statehood Party under the leadership of civil rights activist Julius Hobson. The party will have elected representation on the city council and/or school board for 25 years. Editor will later argue that the party was really the world's first Green Party but had just picked the wrong name.

Last issue of the Capitol East Gazette.

First DC Gazette article on problems of city's latinos. Also a first person anonymous account of a then illegal abortion.

Article arguing that the historic buildings on and around Pennsylvania Avenue (running from the White House to the Capitol) should be saved.

Article by Erbin Crowell on city council hearings concerning marijuana: "Most significant to the Council's hearing — and to a good number of kids who are in prison on pot convictions — was the fact, reiterated by Surgeon General Jesse L. Steinfeld, that 'in the case of marijuana, legal penalties were originally assigned with total disregard for medical and scientific evidence of the properties of the drug or its effects. I know of no clearer instance in which the punishment for infraction of the law is more harmful than the crime,' Steinfeld concluded."

Also: "Judge Charles Halleck recommended more realistic penalties, since present laws tend to cause the community 'to lose faith in the entire system of justice.' James H. Heller of the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union called for legalization of pot. He said he saw no reason that it should be treated any different from alcohol. (He admitted to having tried grass once, but it didn't have any effect. 'Maybe you just didn't know how to smoke it,' Councilwoman Polly Shackleton consoled him.)"

1971

Gazette is forced to stop running the syndicated cartoons of future Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Auth as he has been hired by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Contributing correspondents now include James Ridgeway, later of the Village Voice; Jim Hightower, later editor of the Texas Observer; and Larry Cuban, later school superintendent and national education critic. Also health foods columnist Paula Ayers who complains about the editor breathing through his mouth. The Gazette runs a two part series on gay liberation in DC, written by Tom Shales.

1972

Gazette intern John Cranford writes an expose of DC property tax assessments that helps spur a successful class action suit changing the way property is assessed.

Gazette argues for neighborhood government and for the return of the streetcar.

1973

Gazette introduces the country's first urban planning comic strip - Archihorse - drawn by Washington architect John Wiebenson desgined Resurrection City and was a major figure in saving important local buildings such as the Old Post Office.

RESURRECTION CITY

Carl Bergman, later assistant city auditor, begins writing for the Gazette. Gazette starts publishing syndicated columns by Chuck Stone, later senior editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, and Paul Krassner, godfather of the alternative media. Also the first column in the country written by a prisoner, S. Carl Turner.

1974

Indiana University Press publishes the editor's first book, Captive Capital: Colonial Life in Modern Washington.

Gazette intern Beau Ball writes an expose of the Board of Zoning Adjustment. Within a few months, two members of the board resign.

The editor is elected an advisory neighborhood commissioner.

1975

Architect Rich Ridley draws for the Gazette a picture that illustrates the difference between a Volkswagen and a two-man DC Jail cell. Biggest difference: the VW is larger.

The Washington Review of the Arts becomes a separate non-profit publication run by the former arts staff of the Gazette. It will last 25 years and win a number of awards.

Jonathan Rowe, later with the Christian Science Monitor, writes an article calling for the property tax to be extended to non real estate such as stocks and bonds.

Gazette offers a radical alternative to the planned subway-centered city transit system. Some of the proposed ideas will become the norm as costly subway systems fall out of favor with planners.

1976

The Gazette points out a key section of a new bill regulating massage parlors in DC: "The Mayor shall be responsible for. . . the preparation and administration of oral, written and demonstrative examinations, and for other matters related to the purposes of this act. It shall also be the duty of the Mayor, from time to time, to examine and inspect, or cause to be examined and inspected, all massage establishments and massage schools operated in the District of Columbia, and for this purpose the Mayor may enter and inspect any massage establishment or massage school at any reasonable time. . ."

1977

Gazette runs an article by Neil Seldman arguing for, and explaining how to achieve, a community-owned major league baseball team. Also, a two part series on how pedestrians are mistreated, written by Clemson Smith, later a sportswriter for the NY Daily News and head of a Spanish language sportscasting company.

1978

Under the headline, "Despite It All, Barry's the Best," the Gazette endorses Marion Barry for mayor. It will do so only one more time.

1979

The Gazette introduces Zippy the Pinhead to Washington, drawn by Bill Griffith. The comic will later be featured in the Washington Post.

1980

The Gazette discovers the statue of Washington's Tammany era boss, Alexander Shepherd lying in a field at the Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant. Commences a still futile effort to restore the statue to a place of prominence.

The Gazette begins running the cartoons of Tuli Kupferberg.

An article by the editor is picked up by the Washington Post: "The New Washington: How Gothamoids, Governmental Parasites, Day-Trippers, Power Players, Hit Shoppers & High Style Groupies Are Changing the Face of Washington and Eating Away Its Soul"

The editor becomes a guest commentator on the local NPR station and Washington correspondent for the Illustrated London News. In the latter role, he will become the first person in the journal's over 150 years of service to the British empire to get the word fuck into an article.

1981

Editor reluctantly accepts the replacement columnist offered by Feature Associates for one who has ceased writing. The new columnist is Dave Barry.

The Gazette announces the result of its search for its earliest subscribers. Some will remain to the end including Ron and Nancy Linton who subscribed to the Idler the day it hit the streets. Other still subscribing veterans include Bryce Nelson, Frank and Ursula McManus, Robert Berg, Ralph and Mary Dwan, Larry and Pat O'Rourke, and Frank Joseph. The most geographically eclectic early subscriber is the unrelated Larry Smith who has read this journal in DC, New York, Belgium, England, Italy, Brazil, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

1982

The Gazette begins running columns by Eugene McCarthy.

1983

First Gazette article on AIDs. It is the first year that more than 1,000 men will die of the disease.

Former Gazette contributing correspondent Jim Hightower is elected Agriculture Commissioner of Texas.

1984

The Gazette renames itself the Progressive Review.

First columns by Des Wilson, British journalist and activist, sometimes described as the Ralph Nader of England.

Gazette proposes recreating the DC Statehood Party as the DC Green Party. Some fifteen years later it will happen.

1985

"Bryant Gumbel, Jane Pauley and Willard Scott [attended] a televised mass by the Pope for the benefit of the "Today" show. Afterwards, this noted transcendental trio gave the Pope a baseball hat with "NBC News" on it. It's a case of what the sophisticated public relations types call synergism. Actually, I shouldn't exaggerate. The media really promotes a neatly categorized form of pantheism. The subliminal message is that we should pray Catholic, laugh Jewish and vote Evangelical Christian."

Anthropologist William Beeman, regularly featured in the Review, writes, "As violence increases, and the Israelis and Palestinians age, more and more of those who espouse moderation will disappear from the scene through emigration or old age. There may, in fact, be only a limited amount of time left for advocates of peaceful negotiations before their base of support in both communities becomes completely eroded. . . If some measures are not taken soon to bring about direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian community, there may be no one left on either side interested in talking."

1986

"You have a very good reporting in your journal. However, the broken down car you always picture with the classifieds is due to cease. It is not at all becoming and, in fact, many people find viewing it irritating." - L. S. Silver Spring.Md.

1987

"PSALM OF THE FAST LANE: The Lord is my mentor; I shall want it all. He feedeth me in world-class restaurants and leadeth me beside the sparkling mineral waters. He restoreth my house and bringeth me in the path of good access. Yea, though I jog through the valley of the shadow of high rises I shall fear no viable competition; thy clout and thy bottom line shall comfort me. He shall prepare a game plan against mine enemies, and shall bloweth dry my head and my Volvo shall runneth over to Bloomingdales. Surely perks and power lunches shall follow me all the days of my life and 1 shall dwell in an upscale neighborhood forever and ever. For thine is the power and the glory — But not for long, sucker. I'm right behind you. - SS

The editor is named best DC political columnist by Washington City Paper.

1988

Regular contributor Thomas S Martin predicts that "Yugoslavia will eventually break up" and that "a challenge to the centralized soviet state will arise" as a result of devolutionary trends.

The Review reports on the dangers of computerized voting and suggests possible solutions including an independent review of software and an adequate audit trail.

1989

The Review devotes a whole issue to its alternative drug plan announced at a news conference on Capitol Hill. It doesn't do any good.

1990

The editor is a co-plaintiff in a suit to restore the right to shelter filed by homeless activist Mitch Snyder. The case is won but in the interim Snyder commits suicide.

Article on savings & loan bailout scandal selected as one of the top ten undercovered stories of 1990 by Project Censored. Three years later Utne Reader will name it one of the ten top undercovered stories of the past decade.

Article on urban America is republished in various forms in Utne Reader, San Francisco Examiner, and the Atlanta Constitution

1991

Article on the Gulf War selected as one of the top ten undercovered stories of the year by Project Censored.

The Review presciently notes the growing threat of Yale to American politics: "As close as we can figure it out, the Clarence Thomas affair evolved like this: a Yalie president nominated a Yalie to be on the Supreme Court. This Yalie was accused of sexual harassment by a Yalie professor, whose story was backed by a Yalie judge and a Yalie corporate attorney. The Yalie's story, however, was attacked by a Yalie businessman, who ended up being accused of sexual harassment himself, and a Yalie senator, who ended up being accused of political harassment of the Yalie professor."

1992

The Review wins an Alternative Press Award for its coverage of emerging issues. It will be a finalist for the awards 8 times in the future.

The Review runs a six page timeline of questionable activities by the Bush family. At the time it attracts little attention but, updated and revised, it is now one of the Review's most read features on the web.

Months before the Democratic convention, the Review becomes the first publication to report in depth on what will become known as the Clinton scandals. It lists more than a score of institutions and individuals nearly all of whom will be linked to criminal misdoing before it's over. The Review will be one of a tiny handful of progressive publications to pursue the Clinton scandals seriously over the coming years.

A few years later the editor will be banned from a talk show on the local NPR station WAMU for reasons the host, Derek McGuinty, refuses to tell curious listeners. WAMU political editor Mark Plotkin says it is for "excessive irony" but the evidence points to the Clinton coverage as the editor also finds himself on a de facto blacklist at outlets like CSPAN and the Washington Post. At least ten other non-rightwing journalists will be fired, transferred off the beat, resign or otherwise get in trouble for aggressively pursuing the Clinton scandals.

The Review has an exclusive report on a phenomenon as dangerous as global warming: "Global dumbing involves the virtually imperceptible but steady deterioration of the aggregate human mind -- as well as of its institutions -- much as the temperature of the earth is apparently rising at a rate so minuscule that scientists will be still be debating its escalation even as the waters of the Atlantic Ocean lap at the potted plants in the lobby of the Trump Plaza. . . . If global dumbing is not halted, we may wake up one morning and find that no one in this country knows how to make anything anymore. We may discover our dearest friends and relatives in a catatonic state before the TV and the device won't even be on. When we call for help we may find that 911 has become an endless loop voice mail system from which one can never disconnect. We may even, some day, elect a hologram as president -- and we'll be too dumb to realize it."

1993

Indiana University press editor John Gallman asks the Review's editor to write a book on Clinton's first year. It will get excellent reviews but convince others that the author is not to be trusted. His opposition to Clinton's nomination and work at reforming the liberal mainstay, Americans for Democratic Action, leads to his purge as a vice president of the organization, along with other rebels in the group. One ADA official calls him a combination of Svengali and St. John the Baptist, exercising evil influence over younger members. The editor can't recall what Svengali did and so is unable to deny it.

1994

Fired as a Democratic liberal, the editor turns his energies to helping create a national Green Party. His home will become a occasional gathering spot for Green co-conspirators including the evening before the founding meeting on November 17, 1996.

The Review starts running the cartoons of Tom Tomorrow

The Review starts sending out e-mail updates.

1995

The editor helps to organize a conference of third parties that, though ranging from Reform and Libertarian to Green, Socialist and American Labor Party, reaches consensus on nearly a score of issues and helps lay the groundwork for the creation of a national Green Party.

The Review launches its web page. At the time there are only 100,000 web sites in the world as compared with 45 million today. Only 9% of Americans were online.

The Review announces plans for a revolutionary new daily: USA Tomorrow. Sample features:

"The front page will be almost entirely devoted to news. News is defined as something that has happened, something that is happening or something that is going to happen. News is not what someone said about what is happening nor what someone perceived was going to happen nor what the editors thought the impact of something happening would be on its readership.

"All perceptions (including those excised from the front page and those typical of op-ed pages) will be published in a section called Perceptions. Space will be given based on a rigorous analysis of the perceptiveness of previous perceptions. Letters to the editors will compete according to these principles on a equal basis with paid columnists.

"The obituary department will be staffed by good writers who will be encouraged to remember that it's the subject and not their copy that is supposed to be dead. "

1996

The Review runs an article on how the military is taking over American domestic affairs. Within days of the article being discussed by a columnist in the Washington Post, that paper runs two major pieces on the virtues of military officers in civilian life, including one on the front page and the other with a 13" photo of General Patton.

The Review asks the question: "Why do all moral values have to go into families and TV? Can't we save a few for public policy and budgets?"

On the 30th anniversary of the Gazette, the editor recounts how it started: "In my neighborhood, the Age of Aquarius often looked more like a war zone. Many of the people there were not part of a counter-culture but of an abandoned culture. Even the jukebox at the Stanton Grill -- purveyors of Greek and American food to white Appalachian boarding house residents -- played the Supremes, not Bob Dylan. We lived in one of the toughest sections of town but experienced relatively few problems. Two cars of friends were stolen from our block. Our house was broken into several times. Once, a half gallon of vodka was returned to us by the police, complete with blood stains and evidence tag. I kept it like that in my bar. Some months later, the house was broken into and the bottle stolen again."

1997

WW Norton publishes Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual.

1998

The editor writes a piece describing the difficulties of covering a capital steeped in a culture of impunity: "I had, I realized, stumbled upon the outlines of a new American political fault line. It was so new that it lacked a name, stereotypes, clichés, experts and prophets. In many ways it seemed more a refugee camp than a voluntary assembly, yet, as I thought about it, the more its logic seemed only concealed rather than lacking. On one side were libertarians, blacks, greens, populists, free thinkers, the alienated apathetic, the rural abandoned, the apolitical young, as well as others convinced America was losing its democracy, its sovereignty and/or its decency. On the other side was a technocratic, media, legal, business and cultural elite centered in New York and Washington. At times it felt as if all of America outside of these two centers had turned into a gigantic, chaotic salon des refusés. "

1999

After 23 years at 1739 Connecticut Avenue subletting from John Wiebenson with one rent increase, Starwood Urban purchases the building and triples the rent. The Review moves to 1312 18th Street NW, only a few blocks to the south but definitely less convenient to its conference room, a table next to the bar at La Tomate Restaurant.

The editor, on the 40th anniversary of graduating magna cum probation from Harvard, recalls how it was: "Outfitted with dingy used furniture, a refrigerator stuffed in the closet next to the fireplace, and a huge abstract painting on loan from an artist who could find no other place to hang it, our living room became an attractive meeting place for friends at all hours of day and night. In fact, A-36 is one of the few college rooms to have been memorialized by a serious bard. Tom Whitbread, then a tutor and later a well-published poet and professor at the University of Texas, would visit at unpredictable hours. One early morning, after his hosts had either passed out or fallen asleep, he left a thank-you note. It read:

Terence this is stupid stuff
Smith is strewn about the floor
Dickerson is getting tough
Whitman has gone out for more
Agape has left the room
Orion lives up in the sky
I hear a thin soft voice of doom
The time has come to say good-bye

The editor managed to become news director of the Harvard radio station anyway, although his election as station manager was blocked because of his probation. He will join Jim Ridgeway, Bill Greider, and Larry Bensky among the few Ivy League media types who will pursue alternative journalism rather than the corporate variety.

The Review publishes a guide to how to tell if you're still a liberal. You're probably not if you:

- Are afraid your children can't handle drugs and booze as well as you did.

- Have an piercing alarm system on your Lexus but think gun owners are paranoid.

- The front seat of your SUV is higher than that of your plumbers' pickup truck.

2000

The Review publishes an issue after the election containing nothing but ways to steal elections.

The editor is co-plaintiff in a suit against President Clinton and Congress for denying residents of DC the rights of residents of other federal enclaves. It will eventually be rejected by the Supreme Court.

2001

The editor's fourth book, "Why Bother? Getting a Life in Locked Down Land" is launched at Politics & Prose bookstore one week after September 11.

2002

The editor writes: "I am most days an exile in my native town, living in a place whose values I don't like, whose symbols are jarring, whose language is neither colorful nor convincing, whose obsession with security just creates new fears, and whose ambience often has all the soul, substance, and permanence of a downtown hotel lobby."

2003

"A dysfunctional despot, George III, failed to prevent the creation of the American republic, which lasted over two hundred years until a dysfunctional despot, George II, destroyed it."

Editor writes a 2000-word history of the Iraq war for Harper's Magazine lifted entirely from verbatim falsehoods by Bush administration officials.

"The Review's readership ranges from the extremely conservative to radical anarchists, with plenty of socialists, Greens, liberals, libertarians, punks, journalists, and apathetic strugglers squeezed in between. From the correspondence, it would appear that our readers are literate, curious, not too rigid, have a sense of humor, and are willing to tolerate the unconventional. They like freedom, fairness, and have a generally friendly and tolerant view of others. In short, they would make an excellent core for a movement to revive those ideals currently in such tatters. They would undoubtedly argue about health policy but just as certainly agree on the basic nature of cooperative decency."

2004

The Review ceases publication of its hard copy edition.