At the risk of making myself part of a set of Russian nesting pundits, please let me take this opportunity to endorse Fareed Zakaria‘s column in yesterday’s Washington Post about how to escape our dysfunctional politics, which is itself an endorsement of a column former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards wrote for the The Atlantic. Edwards …
Did Grover Norquist blow it a little bit yesterday when he played the “what the meaning of `is’ is” game with his famous No New Tax Edict, which he wields over Republcians faithful like a scythe? Plain as a guillotine, the edict requires all Republican candiates to forswear raising taxes while in office. First, he …
Fifty years ago (fifty years ago tomorrow, to be precise), my mom and dad drove my brother and me from our home in Baltimore MD to Culpepper County, Virginia, about sixty miles away, for a centennial reenactment of the first Battle of Bull Run, which took place 150 years ago today. About 2000 reenactors restaged …
50 YEARS AGO: THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN AT 100 Read More »
The highly revealing Parliamentary hearings into Rupert Murdoch and the News Corp. hacking scandal were interrupted yesterday when spectator Jonathan May-Bowles, a.k.a. “Jonnie Marbles” tried to throw a shaving cream pie at the media baron but was thwarted by his wife, Wendi Deng. In an article in The Guardian, May-Bowles defended himself. “Simply put, I …
In his column in today’s Times, David Brooks points a finger at the various Republicans who let the opportunity for a grand bargain with President Obama on the deficit crumble away. It is worth quoting at length: “Republicans will come to regret this missed opportunity. So let us pause to identify the people who decided …
Marly Rose Carroll, whom we have literally known her entire life, was married last evening to D.J. Johnson, on the verdant grounds of the Crabtree Kittle House in Mount Kisco. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, the setting was lovely, the weather was perfect, the food was delicious. Parents beamed, friends applauded, guests …
Thanks to the unlikely agency of The New York Lottery, my favorite new song is “Are You Ready?” by Fatty Gets a Stylist, which is masterminded and largely comprised by the Australian sensations Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall. It’s catchy, it’s summery, it made my buy a Mega Millions ticket, and I love it.
Congratulations to my friend Lewis Burke Frumkes on the publication of his new book Favorite Words of Famous People, in which people such as Hillary Clinton, Yo-Yo Ma, Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, Jamie Malanowski and about 250 others discuss their favorite words. ( I know, I know: how the hell did I end up in …
. . .the party is over for Friday Night Lights, a terrific television series based on an excellent Peter Berg movie based ona very good Buzz Bissinger book. The story of a high school football coach and his wife, his players, their families, and the culture of small town football, Friday Night Lights did an …
Members of Congress have have been the authors of some of the great acts of cynicism in our lifetimes: slipping items favored by special interests in the fine print of conference committee reports; voting one way on a bill and thenanother way in enabling legislation or appropriations; citing some high-minded purpose on a bill that …