Call it bad luck. President Obama gets passed a stimulus bill aimed to revive the economy, and Karl Rove says that what he’s really done is revive the GOP. Arguing in The Wall Street Journal that “sometime late this year or early next the economy’’ would have rebounded “on its own,’’ Rove contends that the …
So here’s E.J. Dionne Jr.—a good guy, a reliable liberal—writing in this morning’s Washington Post: “The Obama administration keeps having to learn that bland centrism is not pragmatic, that it’s not helpful in resolving a big crisis and that it certainly doesn’t buy you any love.’’ And here’s David Ignatius, as smart a columnist as …
I put this item on The Huffington Post this morning, and already I got 24 comments–passionate, argumentative comments, pro and con. Amazing. Maybe I missed it, but where was the Fireside Chat? Eight days after his swearing-in, Franklin Roosevelt went on the radio for the first of the so-called fireside chats. He had declared a …
There are more than 800,000 CCTV cameras in London, about 4.5 million in the UK, more per capita than any other place on earth. In Central London, they are everywhere.
Two final meetings today. I had breakfast with Mark Law (above, clear), a veteran journalist who runs thefirstpost.com, one of the very best websites on either side of the Atlantic. It was fun to trade tales with such an accomplished and experienced editor. Afterwards I journeyed to the South Bank to the headquarters of No2ID, …
Wednesday was far and away the busiest and perhaps the most exciting day of the trip. At breakfast at the Royal Gardens Hotel, I met Mina Al-Oraibi (above), the Current Affairs journalist for Asharq Alawsat, an international, pan-Arab daily. I had seen Mina on the BBC’s Dateline London program many times, and knew her to …
In the evening I met David Cox at the great, grand Grosvenor Hotel near Victoria Station. David is a writer and former broadcast journalist whose work, oddly enough, I was recognizing just as he was being recommended to me; just the week before last, he wrote what seemed to be an insightful article about how …
It didn’t seem reasonable to go to London to write about CCTV, and not make a pilgrimage to quiet Islington in North London, where, at 27B Canonbury Square, George Orwell wrote 1984. Today, within 200 yards of the building, 32 CCTV cameras are in unblinking operation. The building, by the way, is for sale. I …
Following Tuesday’s Official Swearing-In and Wednesday’s Swearing-In Unplugged, the White House this morning announced the swearing-in schedule for the rest of the month. January 22nd: Swearing in En Espanol January 23rd: Swearing In: Dance Floor Mix January 24th: Backwards Day nI gniraewS January 25th: Swearing In All You Can Eat Breakfast Buffet January 26th: Swearing …
“America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let …