For once, well-reported, smartly written stories of import grace the covers of the Big Three newsweeklies — no more “What Would Jesus Eat?” at least for the time being.

Newsweek provides a Social Security primer, Time tells us how A.Q. Khan “Sold the Bomb,” and U.S. News & World Report questions whether or not Iraqis are ready to take charge of their country.

Try to resist your natural urge to flee in terror at the words “Social Security.” Instead, go read Allan Sloan’s Newsweek piece, which deftly cuts through the rhetoric. (Sloan takes pains to be very clear, almost as though he’s writing for an audience of precocious eighth graders, but that’s one reason he’s such a good economics writer. And, on a story as complicated as Social Security, we don’t mind the kid gloves.) “Bush’s private accounts don’t make Social Security financially sound — the benefit cuts do,” he writes. “The private accounts are something Bush insists on, not something Social Security needs to regain its long-term financial footing.” Both Republicans and Democrats are lying about the issue, Sloan writes, but the president is leading the charge: “If he can sell this one, the Marketing Hall of Fame should start planning his induction ceremony.”

Alas, there’s nothing essential in the solid U.S. News cover package, unless you haven’t read the paper in a week or so. By contrast, Time’s A.Q. Khan cover piece is a chilling must-read — the story of a former national hero, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, who sold Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Jong Il, Iran’s mullahs and others the technology and equipment they needed to produce nuclear weapons. He “did more to destabilize the planet than did many of the world’s worst regimes,” write Bill Powell and Tim McGirk. Why...

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