The big news two days ago was the announcement, by Secretary Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, of plans to hold a conference on Syria sometime this month. Now, if this conference—assuming it ever happens—can stop the civil war and lead to a relatively smooth landing (“smooth” in this case is a very elastic […]

It may be that, even as I am writing this very sentence, a mid-level State Department official named Gregory Hicks is testifying before a Senate Committee and, in effect, connecting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (never mind the hapless Susan Rice) to a cover-up in the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, […]

Now that media excitement is beginning to die down concerning the recent horrific events in Boston, it is time for more reflective analyses to take pride of place. It used to be that we could rely on the mainstream print media for at least some of this reflection. That cannot be ruled out, but it […]

Today, April 19, marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. What can one possibly say about this event that has not already been said many times over many years? What is there, if anything, that might be noteworthy about a 70th anniversary?Maybe there is something to say; hence this post. […]

It’s both satisfying and terrifying to finish a book. It’s satisfying because it’s a little like finally getting a Haystacks Calhoun clone to remove himself from your prone chest cavity. It’s terrifying not so much because of what others may think of it—though that’s not an entirely negligible concern—but because of the fear that the […]

Catching up on some stuff I don’t want to slip by:The most important news of the past few days is arguably contained in a somewhat-buried article in the New York Times by Robert F. Worth and C.J. Chiver, entitled “Seized Chinese Weapons Raise Concerns on Iran.”  The subtitle gives a hint of one of the […]

There is a rare gem in Sunday’s New York Times in the business section.  Former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Christina Romer, has provided a balanced honest, accurate and concise summary of the arguments concerning the minimum wage. Given that a significant rise in the minimum wage was one of President Obama’s main […]

Never let it be said that there is not considerable entertainment value in political life. Watching the First Lady at the Oscar ceremony trying to position herself for post-White House celebrity is pretty funny—to me at least. Gazing upon the affection that the Italian electorate still has for Silvio Berlusconi is more than amusing; it […]

I saw Argo a few weeks before the Oscars, and I liked about 99 and 44/100 of it. Once the plot action starts, the tone, images, language and emotional pitch of the main characters all seem high-quality replicas of historical reality. Not that I have any expertise in making or evaluating film as an art […]

It has come to light in recent days that alongside French and other African troops fighting in Mali are both Chadians and, more important, cadres of the MNLA—the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad. The few media expressions of this latter datum generally dump this key piece of information far down in their articles. […]