From Martin Amis’s book Koba the Dread: …[T]orture, among its other applications, was part of Stalin’s war against the truth. He tortured, not to force you to reveal a fact, but to force you to collude in a fiction. And … Continue reading →
The first thing to say is that this was an abominable act. Information on the shooter is coming in slowly, but the best we can tell so far is that he was a white supremacist who had been discharged less … Continue reading →
James Holmes’ psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton warned the university’s threat assessment team that he might be dangerous, and, tragically, nothing was done to stop him—at least, nothing effective: Sources have told KMGH-TV that the threat assessment team never had a … Continue reading →
So far, the information we’ve gotten about James Holmes doesn’t really fit the portrait of the usual perpetrator of mass murder. That doesn’t mean that, as more facts emerge, he won’t seem to have been unstable and isolated, and to … Continue reading →
When I first read about the massacre in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, my thoughts went to the victims of the horror, and my initial impression (before the shooter had been identified) was that the perp would turn out … Continue reading →
Here’s a Yahoo article that says some recent research indicates that spanking leads to increased mental illness. But this Slate piece says Yahoo’s wrong: Despite the Yahoo headline, and many others like it, the study, published in Pediatrics in early … Continue reading →
It’s been forty years since this photo shocked Americans: Do you know the story behind the photo? I tell it in this article at PJ. Some of what you read may surprise you. [NOTE: I’ve written about the photo before, … Continue reading →
Some of the new evidence about the Zimmerman-Martin confrontation actually appears to be penetrating the public awareness, according to the results of this poll: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 24% of American Adults still believe the … Continue reading →
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, is now on trial along with four accomplices. And it’s in a military court rather than the civilian courts the Obama administration would have preferred. Thank goodness. One of the worst excesses of the … Continue reading →
The quote in the title of this piece is from Bobby Green, one of four black people who were heroes in the LA riots of twenty years ago. But there’s no “just” about it; the acts were rays of hope … Continue reading →
It’s easy to concentrate on the election here and miss what’s happening in Europe, such as, for example, Sarkozy’s threatened ousting in the impending French election by socialist challenger Hollande. It’s all about the economy, stupid: With the highest joblessness … Continue reading →
There’s been a spate of columns on the right since the Trayvon Martin killing asking the question this one asks: why do we ignore the murders of blacks by other blacks? And why do we hear so much about the … Continue reading →