Today’s LA Times has a good piece by Jacob Heilbrunn about Democratic neocons. They want, in essence, to return to the beliefs that originally brought the neocons to prominence, the beliefs that motivated old-fashioned Cold War liberals such as Democratic…
Let’s talk about the neoconservative network, and make a few connections, then a theoretical leap. Start at the top. Lately Vanity Fair has reported that Vice President Dick Cheney travels everywhere with a biological and chemical suit. No more specifics…
The American Prospect—Greg Sargent—has a good item on the bogusness of those horrifying reports that Jews and other religious minorities in Iran would have to wear colored badges identifying them as infidels. One of the original reports on this canard,…
Under this heading, from time to time I’m going to dig up some of the sage advice the neocons and their fellow travelers offered us as they pushed the country toward war in Iraq. First at bat is David Wurmser,…
I just got a copy of Ken Pollack’s latest book on Iran, The Persian Puzzle, and was shocked on flipping to page 429, the Author’s Note at the end of the book, to read that Pollack has never been to…
A leading cardinal has stated that condoms are “a lesser evil” than AIDS, thereby going against church doctrine. I know it’s a big job to reform Islam, but can someone spend some time on the Vatican?
In the last few days it’s come home to me (a little late!) that we are in a deepening crisis. Have to hand it to you left wing alarmists, you were way ahead of me. My late wake-up call was…
On the subject of the Clash of Civilizations, consider this. The Rolling Stones played China after censoring five songs (including Brown Sugar and Beast of Burden). Why no hullaballoo over Chinese censorship? The Chinese are just as perplexing and alien…
The introduction of Playboy Magazine in Indonesia demonstrates an important point about the Islamic world. You’ll see that the article notes that the magazine is fifty years behind the American edition in terms of what it shows—not even nipples. The…
I was checking out the Christian Science Monitor’s remarkable series of intimate photographs of Jill Carroll’s reunion with her parents, hugging her father, falling over in her mother’s lap, when I felt the tears falling on my keyboard. http://www.csmonitor.com/slideshows/2006/homecoming2/index.html Why…