At today’s State Department briefing, a reporter commented that the room was freezing and spokesman Sean McCormack made a joke about, Is that my responsibility? People laughed. Later another reporter commented on how cold the room was. When the cameras…

A few days ago I raised the question of whether targeted assassinations in Iraq are helpful, when they kill so many civilians, and whether we weren’t emulating Israel too much (again). Turns out that in late June on Democracy Now,…

In reading Dershowitz’s rebuttal to Mearsheimer and Walt, I noticed something else he said: “It is rightfully considered vile to suggest that American Catholic politicians such as John F. Kennedy and John Kerry owe their primary allegiance to the Vatican…

On yesterday’s Fresh Air, Jane Mayer, author of a splendid dissection of the power of Cheney’s counsel, David Addington, in the New Yorker last week, supported the theory that the military is now the thinktank for the antiwar movement. Bravely…

I was reading Alan Dershowitz’s autobiography, Chutzpah, the other night when I came to some lines on page 16 that I found shocking: My generaton of Jews was too young to fight against Nazism or for Israeli independence, too American…

My last prediction about the World Cup was better than half-right. True, I got only two of the four teams in the semis—I said Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands—but my coup was the declaration that it would be all-Europe. Even the…

The King of Tonga turned 88 today. Four years ago the New Zealand papers had him dying, still he keeps going. I bring him up because I wrote a book about the murder of a Peace Corps volunteer by another…

Have you watched Ray Suarez of the NewsHour from Mexico City? He seems a different person entirely from the grim professional at the desk back in Virginia, or wherever they be. He’s impassioned, fuerte, and alive. He seems thrilled to…

The New Republic this week has a snidely-vicious attack on John Murtha as the destroyer of the Democratic party’s hopes for November. The article reflects TNR’s belief that the war in Iraq is a good thing, and underscores the deep…

A few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Melissa Block of National Public Radio interviewed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about what war would mean for Iraq. It’s a good interview, worth reviewing. Wolfowitz is of course now at the…