This story was assigned by the New York Times Magazine in 2005 but was not published.

***

WANG Youcai is not given to ostentation where his political beliefs, or anything else, are concerned. Having spent much of his life in prison, Wang has earned his dissident street credentials. But he does allow himself one symbolic indulgence: he does not leave home without a copy of the U.S. Constitution tucked into the inside breast pocket of his meager winter jacket. The U.S. Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It, a cheap little pamphlet edition, goes with Wang everywhere, sitting intentionally close to his heart.

When Wang, a slight, deferential man of 39, pulled it out to show me one rainy, cold morning last spring in a cramped teaching assistant’s office at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, his adopted home for now, I was reminded of Teddy Roosevelt’s unlucky 1912 campaign stop in nearby Chicago, where an anarchist’s bullet was kept from entering his heart by a thick speech Roosevelt had stuffed in his breast pocket. “I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death,” Roosevelt said to the crowd, blood seeping through his vest. (more…)

This story was assigned by Vanity Fair magazine in 2007 but was not published.

***

THE Reverend Benjamin Faust lives on the edge of Harrisonburg, Virginia, near a gas station and an adult bookstore and next to the Open Door Gospel Church, where, according to the roadside billboard, “Everybody is Somebody and Jesus Christ is Lord.” That first proposition is a tough sell in Harrisonburg. Reverend Faust works weekdays as a low-paid programmer at an Internet marketing firm, and his wife, Jen, doesn’t work. Their studio apartment is crammed with consignment furniture and bric-a-brac. It’s the fusty existence of a struggling young American couple.

The Fausts’ spiritual life tells a more triumphant story. Faust does not preach at Open Door, nor at any of the other Baptist, Lutheran or Pentecostal churches in Harrisonburg, but instead at the Abundant Living Ministries Cyberchurch. In all likelihood you’ve never heard of this denomination. That’s because it exists only in Second Life, the online virtual world. Faust suffers from stage fright, but in Second Life he commands his own pulpit, and at a church far more numinous than the bare country affairs in Harrisonburg – marble walls, sun-drenched stained glass windows. Like a Great Awakening evangelist, Faust staked out his plot of digital land and built this temple by hand, with 3-D graphics software, and then began inviting in passers-by. That was two years ago. (more…)

This story was assigned by Portfolio magazine in 2008 but was not published.

***

Last June, as the Democratic nomination race reached its climax, a shorter but still raucous contest took place on the Senate floor over a piece of legislation known as Lieberman-Warner. Even by the standards of the New Deal-size bills that the Obama Administration has sent down the pike since, Lieberman-Warner was colossal, a blueprint for America’s downshifting into a carbon-constrained economy, allocating billions for such things as alternative energy research, zero-emission cars and reforestation projects. And, of course, it didn’t stand a chance. Debate began on a Monday and ended that Friday when Republicans threatened a filibuster. Why was no mystery: that same Monday, General Motors announced it was shuttering plants and selling its Hummer brand, and that Friday, the International Energy Agency released a report saying that for greenhouse gas emissions to be halved by 2050, the generally agreed-upon minimum for affecting climate change, world governments would have to invest about $45 trillion, with the U.S. taking the lead. (more…)