News

In today's WAPO Eli Saslow writes a profile of Jon Favreau --- at 27 the youngest person ever to be named head of the White House speechwriting shop. This is certainly a more dignified appearance than the last time Mr. Favreau surfaced in the blatts.  But buried in...

The January issue of Smithsonian magazine features an article by James Reston Jr., whose book The Conviction Of Richard Nixon was an important source for the play and film Frost/Nixon (and who was portrayed in the play as the onstage narrator of the proceedings,...

Wonkette has just posted ---with the usual snarky commentary under the headline "Richard Nixon Just Called To Say he Loves You"--- a tape of RN's conversation with the White House Operator on 25 December 1971.  It was, of course, RN's long-time habit to place calls to...

The New York Times' coverage of Caroline Kennedy's first outing as a Senate candidate  can hardly be what the Ms. Kennedy or her supporters had in mind. In fact, the story's headline ---In Appearance Upstate, Kennedy Says Little--- is really quite generous because it...

Several years ago, David Cornwell (better known by his nom de plume, John Le Carré) told an interviewer that, “espionage was not really something exclusive and clandestine. It was actually the currency of the Cold War. Spies were the poor bloody infantry of the Cold...

Jonah Goldberg's column today applies some belated common sense to current events: The freakout is understandable. Economic trust is breaking down. Investors are buying Treasury bills that pay no interest because they're scared to leave their money even in insured...

Mike McCurry ---who, along with Marlin Fitzwater, is generally considered the gold standard of modern White House Press Secretaries--- has written an interesting piece  ("How My Party Found God") for the Daily Beast about the role faith could play in the Obama...

Russ Smith is a Baltimore resident and occasional contributor to the Wall Street Journal. But once upon a time he was quite a potent figure in the world of "alt-weeklies," founding the Baltimore City Paper in 1977 and a Washington counterpart four years later.  Upon...

Today we learned that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has informed New York Gov. David Paterson that yes, she does want to sit in Sen. Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated seat on Capitol Hill. Before I get to the touching video clip featured in this post, let me post a...

"Tell me about the loneliness of Good, He-Man. Is it equal to the loneliness of Evil?" - Frank Langella as Skeletor (in a line he personally wrote), to Dolph Lundgren in He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe In a comment to my post about the Washington Post's review...