Columns, pieces and posts
What has been happening in Ukraine is not a wake-up call precisely but a tugging at the attention, a demand to focus. There’s a sense that in some new way we are watching the 21st century take its shape and express its central realities. Exactly 100 years ago, in August 1914, the facts that would […]
Here again is the problem of surveillance professionals operating within a highly technologized surveillance state: If they can do it they will do it. If they are able to take an action they will sooner or later take it, whether or not it’s a good thing, even whether or not it is legal. Defenders of […]
What a small and politically vicious man New York’s new mayor is. Bill de Blasio doesn’t like charter schools. They are too successful to be tolerated. Last week he announced he will drop the ax on three planned Success Academy schools. (You know Success Academy: It was chronicled in the film “Waiting for Superman.” It’s […]
The constant mischief of the progressive left is hurting the nation’s morale. There are few areas of national life left in which they are not busy, and few in which they’re not making it worse. There are always more regulations, fees and fiats, always more cultural pressure and insistence. The president brags he has a […]
John Kerry’s stance and statement in Kiev today were good—clear, strong and calibrated. He made U.S. sympathies clear. He didn’t bluster. He was plain about the facts on the ground as he ascertained them. “It is clear that Russia has been working hard to create a pretext for being able to invade further,” he said. […]
What a great, myth-destroying statement from Marco Rubio, on the floor of the U.S. Senate yesterday afternoon, on the facts about Cuba and their connection to events in Venezuela. We have pressed in these parts for American political figures to speak clearly and with moral confidence about American sympathies in various international disputes. Rubio’s speech […]
A great confusion has set in about what American political figures should and should not say when confronted with violent political events in other countries. Exemplifying the confusion, as he does on so many issues, is President Obama. Kiev is in crisis. Protesters have taken up arms to fight the government, whose security forces fire […]
Watching Season 2 of “House of Cards.” Not to be a scold or humorless, but do Washington politicians understand how they make themselves look when they embrace the show and become part of its promotion by spouting its famous lines? Congressmen only work three days a week. Each shot must have taken two hours or […]
This afternoon there’s nothing to do but snow haiku. My attempts at 5, 7, 5: Full fat flake fell far To sleep on the rude pavement. Grraaawwwr. The shovel. Run! Snowflake: distinctive, Unique. Liquefies, blends. A Loss, but less lonely All New York today Is slush. Slip, fall, “Have a hand!” We shyly love mess […]
All the Northeast is covered in snow, and the sound and clamor of Washington is muffled. The federal government took a day off; the news is full of weather. Not a bad time to ponder why people do what they do—more specifically, why witnesses to history often take notes on what they see and hear, […]