We hardly expect to see obscenities in the Gray Lady, much less on the front page, but there it was, almost shimmering in its power: “redistribution”. Esteemed commentator John Harwood took up the challenge by describing how the Obama administration sidled around the dreaded word when selling the ACA to the public in 2010, and […]
Although Ben Brantley called this a “neglected masterwork”, by Don Margulies, it is seriously flawed, even if never less than interesting. This story of an elderly couple, Holocaust survivors, who retire to Florida but find that they cannot escape the legacy of that horrific experience, especially in how it affected their adult, mentally disturbed daughter, […]
The question of government surveillance is getting major play now, and we’re forced to examine the protection of privacy in the Constitution. But the basic issue is whether we are now more vulnerable to government abuse. Based on the published Snowden leaks, I think we are, but this can hardly be surprising after 9/11. […]
It’s not easy to goof on history. You have to use an era and place that are widely known, and that evoke common images, and then send it up with gleeful ridicule. The fun just follows from that. Mel Brooks made a whole career out of it: the Old West, Robin Hood’s England, Nazi […]
This latest shootdown in the Senate seems to consolidate – at least in my own mind – a certain dynamic with regard to this administration that goes beyond the cover story. Granted, any new regulation of firearms has uncertain prospects. But everything I’ve heard about the latest campaign was different. There seemed to be a […]
We all know what the “catch” is: the undocumented eleven million or so who are already here, but who will need to be allowed to stay, and possibly become citizens, if anything can ever be done to repair our broken immigration system. I admit that I don’t like letting them apply for legal status, […]
This past Sunday, (9/24/12) Robert Pear reported this in the NYTimes: the Obama administration is planning a pilot project to distribute questionnaires in hospitals and doctors’ offices for patients to report “medical mistakes”. These would then be sent to research centers for analysis and, when sufficiently transformed into pure data, forwarded to the White […]
I’m a regular reader of Tom Friedman’s column, and I wasn’t surprised by his latest enthusiasm: inspiring the nation to commit to a goal of “keeping everyone in school”(NYTimes, 9/2/12). He’s a very credible “can-do” kind of guy, and his belief that America has the ability to thrive in a global economy is convincing because it […]
It’s always a delight to find a terrific film when you’re just surfing the channels. This treasure from Preston Sturges was his first (released in 1940), but it already has his trademark rapid-fire shouted dialogue, mordant humor and sudden tonal shifts that characterized his entire – yes, I must say it – oeuvre. […]
As a long-time SCOTUS junkie, I have never seen anything like the white-knuckle anticipation for the Obamacare decision. Whatever the outcome, I think the Court is 9-0 about this principle of appellate jurisprudence: Get out of town fast! You can be sure that not one of these nine jurists will enjoy being in the glare of […]
