Out in West Texas, from which the New England-bred and Andover, Yale and Harvard-educated George W. Bush pretends to hail, the word “break” is most often used with horses. (Bush…
The Bush Administration has finally achieved something unprecedented. The organized bar–with a vote just one short of unanimity–has declared one of Bush’s executive orders illegal and vowed to seek Congressional…
Is it about the glory Of our dear motherland?–I ask in vain! Not on his lofty brow, nor in his looks May one peruse his secret thoughts; always The same…
I keep learning more about the various connections in the Don Siegelman case, and here’s an interesting person we’ve barely discussed: Alabama Senator Richard Shelby (a Republican, though first elected…
The address is 611 Folsom Street in downtown San Francisco. To be more precise, it’s in a tightly guarded, access restricted room: Room 641A. There’s a loud sucking sound coming…
Yesterday I posted an item regarding writer David Axe’s reflections on the Pentagon’s blogger outreach program. I’ll follow up today with his observations about a recent Boeing-sponsored junket for journalists,…
Out in West Texas, they have a name for the desert flower that crops up and blooms where the cattle have left their droppings: turd blossom. And George W. Bush…
Gottfried Benn is certainly the chief of the German expressionist poets. He was a controversial figure, a medical doctor who made his name as a man of letters, and as…
A drowned driver of a beer truck was dumped onto the table Someone had stuck a dark-pale lilac-colored aster Between his teeth I cut out the tongue and gums With…
Every day I place less value in intellect. Every day I see more clearly that if the writer is to repossess himself of some part of his old impressions, which…
In the midst of a brief thunderstorm that transfixed the New York City subway system and killed one motorist, a tornado formed over the Atlantic Ocean, grazed the north coast…
Rove and Bush delivered tearful farewells on the White House lawn this morning. It was an emotional experience. But I’m still counting on this evening’s Daily Show to deliver a…
Under the heading of unplanned ironies, consider the picture of Karl Rove—the man at the center of a Washington corruption storm coming out of the misuse of the Department of…
Last month, I wrote about (1 2 3) the Pentagon’s “Surrogates” program, which works with selected military analysts, bloggers, former defense officials, opinion-makers, and others who are almost all highly…
The Monday morning bombshell is Karl Rove’s announcement that he will shortly leave the service of President Bush. Here’s the AP account: Karl Rove, President Bush’s close friend and chief…
Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, whose London Review of Books article on “the Israel Lobby” unleashed a major storm in the United States, have worked their article into a…
And it happened that someone came to speak with reproach about the fact that he had been exiled. But Diogenes replied abruptly, saying: “No, you dense fellow, that is how…
It may be owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch, but the Times (London) is still able to report in a free way about politics in the United States that is…
Last winter, making arrangements for a law of armed conflict conference I was putting together with some friends from West Point and Princeton, I had a lunch with one of…
I have been following with some interest the outcome of the trip that Michael O’Hanlon, Ken Pollack and Anthony Cordesman made to Iraq. It generated an op-ed by O’Hanlon and…
For the last year, the thinking in many well-informed circles among counterterrorism experts has been that Iraq was an incurable disaster. The internal contradictions and splits within the country were…
McKenzie Funk, “Cold Rush: The Coming Fight for the Melting North,” Harper’s, Sept. 2007 Over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself up north of the forty-fourth parallel several…
Over at ABC News, Justin Rood reports that in addition to the leaks from the White House to back Gonzales, from Gonzales and from Minority Leader Boehner, now we have…
Fredo’s Awesome Baghdad Adventure Alberto Gonzales has been the Bush Administration’s whipping boy for the last half year now. The Administration offers him up with regularity to absorb blows that…
Hollywood gives us James Bond as the man with a license to kill. However, the Bush Administration has fashioned a pretty broad exemption for security contractors in Iraq. As the…
The study of law is dirty and mercenary because its ultimate object is money; one studies law neither for delight nor simply for the knowledge of things. Thus a lawyer…
Matthew Scully has a significant piece in the September Atlantic entitled “Present at the Creation,” which is essentially an accounting of the meteoric rise of Michael Gerson as a print…
Sometimes inspirational pieces can be found in strange corners. From anthropologist Edgardo Krebs, a powerful tribute published in today’s Washington Post to a Quechua-speaking shaman (though as he teaches us,…
I have just posted original translations of two poems by the great Silesian Baroque poet Andreas Gryphius. Last week when I put up my translation of Brentano’s Springtime Cry from…
Human Misery What indeed are men! A dwelling place for grim pains, A ball of false fortune, a will-o’-the-wisp of their times, A stage of bitter fear, set with sharp…