Monika Bauerlein

Editor in Chief

Since taking the helm at Mother Jones in 2006, Monika and her co-editor, Clara Jeffery, have won two National Magazine Awards, launched a nine-person Washington bureau, relaunched the website, given birth, and forgotten what it’s like to sleep.

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Monika Bauerlein is co-editor of Mother Jones, where, together with Clara Jeffery, she spearheaded an era of editorial growth and innovation, marked by two National Magazine Awards for general excellence, the addition of a seven-person Washington Bureau, and an overhaul of the organization’s digital strategy that tripled MotherJones.com's traffic. Previously she was Mother Jones' investigative editor, focusing on long-form projects marrying in-depth reportage, document sleuthing, and narrative appeal. She has also worked as an alternative-weekly editor (at Minneapolis/St. Paul’s City Pages), a correspondent for US and European publications in Washington, D.C. and at the United Nations, an AP stringer, corporate trainer, translator, sausage slinger and fishing-line packager. She lives in Oakland.

Deep, cleansing breath

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Fri Jun. 30, 2006 1:27 AM PDT

Bikram Choudhury, the "hot yoga" entrepreneur/franchiser/guru who is fighting a string of legal battles over his claim that he owns the copyright to various ancient yoga practices, is in a spat with the L.A. building department. After finding, the LA Times reports, 160 people in Bikram's warehouse packed into a space suitable for 49, plus not enough fire exits and other violations, the city has slapped Bikram with 10 criminal charges. Ever mellow, Bikram "said that he's the victim of a five-year campaign of harassment by employees of the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. He also said that he had had it with Los Angeles and was moving the world headquarters of his Yoga College of India to Honolulu. 'Thanks a lot, L.A.,' he said. 'I've made up my mind.'"

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All We Need to Know We Learned from Tom DeLay

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Thu Jun. 29, 2006 3:00 PM PDT

Lesson for today: It pays to break the rules. In 2002, Tom DeLay conceived of and executed a scheme to raise money for Republican legislative candidates in Texas, who would take over the statehouse, then immediately turn around and redraw the state's Congressional districts to cement the GOP majority in Washington. It worked: Texas sent 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans to Congress the year before the redistricting; the year after, the delegation had 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats. And now we know that it was legal too: Yes, said Justice Kennedy in his opinion rejecting a challenge to the redistricting, the new Texas districts were drawn "with the sole purpose of achieving a Republican congressional majority"--and that's just fine. So what if DeLay is still in trouble for the possibly illegal means by which this enterprise was originally financed (for a primer, see Lou Dubose's DeLay profile)? Win some, lose some; as long as you lose the battle and win the war...

Scientists want libraries? What next?

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Thu Jun. 29, 2006 11:00 AM PDT

Here's a bright idea: Close he EPA scientific libraries so regulators can't get at the science that, under law, they are supposed to base their decisions on. No worries, a flack told the Washington Post--all that stuff is going to be digital anyway. Except that there's no money for that either. All but eliminating the agency's library network saves $2 million; according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the EPA estimates that "providing full library access saves an
estimated 214,000 hours in professional staff time worth some $7.5
million annually."

The Day Senator Bunning Read the Newspaper

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Wed Jun. 28, 2006 10:40 PM PDT

So Kentucky's Sen. Jim Bunning says he doesn't read newspapers, but he did pick up a copy of the Times long enough to read the financial-surveillance story, and he knows treason when he sees it.

Bunning equated the Times' story last week on the bank records to publishing the phone number of Osama bin Laden, saying the al-Qaida leader would be tipped and change his number immediately.
"In my opinion, that is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, therefore it is an act of treason," Bunning said of the story, which detailed how the government is analyzing a massive database on international money transfers.

Let the record reflect that to suggest that terrorists would have had no way to suspect that their records might be surveiled--through an agency that out and out advertises its cooperation with law enforcement), you have to assume that they're pretty damn obtuse. But no matter: Bunning's point really is that, as Ari Fleischer would have it, "people need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

"What you write in a war and what is legal to do for the federal government, or state government, whoever it is, is very important in the winning of the war on terror."
Asked if that could be a recipe for government abuse of civil liberties, Bunning responded: "It could be."

And Spitup is the New Black

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Mon Jun. 26, 2006 12:02 AM PDT

"I do think that children are becoming the new designer handbags," a baby-bling retailer tells the L.A. Times, a propos the run on the shirt that Shiloh J-P wore in her first public appearance. But then, what would you expect in a country where more than 500 people named their newborns Armani ? Then again, it beats Espn (pronounced Espin), yes, as in the channel.