Most people know about concentration camps and the Holocaust; the words have come to be nearly synonymous, although they’re not. But most people are far less aware of how the whole thing began: that it didn’t start with mass murder … Continue reading →
[NOTE: The word “deal” is in scare quotes because it’s not actually a deal, it’s an announcement of a tentative deal to make a deal. But for the rest of this post I’ll leave out the quote marks for the … Continue reading →
[Part I here.] Whatever was I talking about when I said that the lyrics of “Walk Away, Renee” were poetry? You might think the lyrics aren’t so special; just the usual rock pap. But bear with me and see whether … Continue reading →
I wrote about the Atlanta school cheating scandal several times (see the first three entries after this one on this list). It’s a shocking tale of widescale corruption within the public education system of the city, plus an attempted coverup: … Continue reading →
The more I think about the Iran deal announced yesterday, the stranger it gets. One strange thing about it is that it’s not a deal at all; it’s certainly not a contract, a treaty, or an agreement. It’s an announcement … Continue reading →
Success! They’ve agreed to agree on something-or-other sometime or other, maybe by June 30: International negotiators announced the framework for an Iranian nuclear deal Thursday, capping days of exhaustive and tense talks that blew past their original deadline. The preliminary … Continue reading →
Meanwhile, of course, real religious wars are going on, and it’s Muslim extremists/terrorists who are driving them: Islamist gunmen burst into a Kenyan university before dawn Thursday, shooting students and taking hostages in a terror attack that left 70 dead, … Continue reading →
It is no surprise that a campaign on social media sites has forced Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana to close down temporarily or perhaps permanently. The pizza establishment’s owners are not activists; they merely answered an inquiring reporter’s questions, saying … Continue reading →
[Bumped up.] We’ve seen a lot of change from Obama since he became president in 2008. After all, he ran on a promise of hope and change, and although he didn’t exactly specify what the change would be, people somehow … Continue reading →
Why, isn’t this what a nice Orwellian Department of Justice ought to be doing? Protecting Obama’s friends: The Justice Department will not seek criminal contempt charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner, the central figure in a scandal that erupted … Continue reading →
Recently I wrote a post that featured the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” Today I decided to look up more about the poem’s background, and came up with this: Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of … Continue reading →
…is that he’s a fool rather than a knave. It’s come down to that. There are still defenders (or at least partial defenders) of Obama’s Middle East policy, and they’re not even all liberals. Ross Douthat, one of those partial … Continue reading →