Barack Obama will probably make a decent US senator once he gets running for president out of his system. Fortunately for those who think the Senate can benefit from his undivided attention, the happy day approaches ever faster: his strategists have apparently decided that they can do without the support of gays and the religious […]

The San Diego Air Show was in town a week ago and my residence was squarely in the flight path. The noise was nervewracking, and that’s without the expectation that missile or bomb strikes were imminent. Imagine what Iraqis who live in the vicinity of the air strikes conducted by the US military must be […]

According to Ronald Reagan, Human Events magazine offers “aggressive reporting, superb analysis and one of the finest collections of conservative columnists to be found.” Of course much of that collection as Reagan knew it is under glass now, but the magazine has others who are still alive or are cleverly simulating life.
So that’s one […]

I Don’t Know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson (A-)
No Place Like Home, by Barbara Samuel (B)
In A Lonely Place, by Dorothy Hughes (B+)
It always makes sense to expand your horizons, and this month (this month and then some–sorry) I thought I’d look at contemporary women authors. Not talking canonical stuff here, but […]

My friend Cell Whitman emailed me a few days ago about a C-SPAN interview with the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. Kessler was discussing U.S. - Soviet relations, and the difficulties they present putative Russia expert Condoleezza Rice, when he let fly with this little gem about Bush and Putin:
[A]t his very first meeting with Putin, […]

The New York Times has discontinued its subscriber-only Times Select service and unleashed columnist Tom Friedman upon the world once again. In what cannot be a coincidence, Friedman celebrated his release with one of his most deeply stupid columns in years.
Six years on from 9/11, Friedman has realized that his reaction to the attacks was […]