When those of us born in the rough wake of World War II were growing up, many of us divided the world and its rules into those which applied to "adults" and those which we were bound to follow. In...
We laugh about it sometimes. Those of us who live in the State of New York, particularly, perhaps, those of us who have worked for it, or work on legislative issues, have watched as what passes for a government has...
The seminal event of this week, and perhaps this year, ends, as it should, on a day of national consecration as much as those we celebrate that way. The photograph of the President, whose grandfather and great-uncle were part of...
There is much more to say about this important moment and, when I have a few minutes this weekend I will try to present a few here to see what others think, but I did have time to throw this...
I once had a job which required me, from time to time, to speak on the record to newspaper reporters and their supposed equivalents in the broadcast media. The people who were responsible for my office's relations with the same...
I am not sure exactly when it happened. Maybe it was during 1968 when the murders of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy made it look as if the country could break apart. Somehow the progressive wing of the party got...
It sits in the back of my head and, as has become common these days, the internet comes to the rescue. Once, I remembered, I read a very compelling article in Time magazine about how what came to be known...
A Memorial Day weekend doubleheader. First up this post, in response to an interesting segment of the Rachel Maddow Show about what the president calls "prolonged detention"...
A few weeks back, discussing torture and the memos which tried to explain why the government could employ particular methods of extracting information from those in its custody, it seemed important to remind readers of our national mood in the...
Leaving Fenway Park after game two of the 2004 World Series and crossing Kenmore Square to retrieve my car, it was hard to ignore the young man selling tee shirts on which was written that vulgar slogan about how bad...
This is probably entitled to its own post instead of being welded onto something else, as much of what follows was when I threw this out a month ago. That was when The New York Times, its own financial distress...
Almost everyone who practices law, and particularly those who spend a fair amount of time doing appellate work, flinches a bit when the first thing discussed when a vacancy arises on the Supreme Court is some perceived need for the...
What follows below the fold is a slightly edited from a post last September, in which I tried to explain whatever Sen McCain's qualifications were to be president, they were irrelevant given the party which nominated him. It is worth...
It is so easy for some people. A year or so ago, they supported Sen Edwards, so every other Democratic candidate was wrong about almost everything. Later, they supported the eventual winning candidate, so that his opponent became the devil...
Not to get too pompous about it, but this weekend's post will further the discussion of what to do about a country which is scared into abandoning its cherished values by the lowest rent political opportunists to come this way...
"And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it -- and rather successfully. Cassius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.'Edward R. Murrow,...
Obligations elsewhere mean that a full post under this name can only appear generally once a week, usually on Saturdays. This week's was published yesterday. But it is hard to ignore a growing noise that could well become dangerous. As...
In its vain, and vaguely sickening attempt to find some way to bring President Obama down to their level or to find something as base about him as the embarrassment who was identified as our president for the prior eight...
When President Harding died in San Fransisco while on his Voyage of Understanding in 1922 (White House spin being what is was even then, even if it was not called that yet) the national outpouring of grief caused people to...
This may be the first lesson we learn: The most elemental obligation of a parent, beyond feeding and clothing a child, is to teach and, when she or he gets older, send them to be taught by others. There is...
