Ever since their paths crossed in high school, Mother Jones contributing writer Molly Ivins (The Uncompassionate Conservative) has been an observer of our president. Her books about Bush include Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America and Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush.

Stephanie Mencimer (Death by a Thousand Cuts) is an editor for the Washington Monthly. Previously, she worked for Washington's City Paper, the Washington Post, and Legal Times. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media Award for her reporting on an epidemic of childhood obesity in Washington, D.C.

Contributing writer Charles Bowden (Little Big Man) is the author of several books about his beloved Sonoran Desert, near his Tucson, Arizona, home. His last story for Mother Jones was a profile of the anti-sweatshop campaigner Charlie Kernaghan (Keeper of the Fire, July/August).

Zia Jaffrey (On Their Own) is the author of The New Apartheid: AIDS in South Africa and The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India. Her reporting has also appeared in the Washington Post, Vogue, and The Nation.

Photographer Kristen Ashburn (On Their Own) has won several awards for her photos on AIDS in Zimbabwe, including the Marty Forscher Fellowship for humanistic photography. Kristen is represented by Contact Press Images.

Michael Scherer (The Making of the Corporate Judiciary) is the Washington correspondent for Mother Jones.

Gary Greenberg (Is it Prozac? Or Placebo? and Notebook) is a psychotherapist and professor of psychology. His writing on medicine and science has appeared in the New Yorker, Discover, Rolling Stone, and McSweeneys, and is featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002.

Author Rick Bass (Dispatch) brings to his writing the perspective of a former oil geologist. He is the author of 18 books, including the novel Where the Sea Used to Be. He lives in northwestern Montana, where he has been working for 17 years to help protect the last roadless areas in the Yaak Valley.