The trouble with the death of Ronald Reagan is that, whatever else it means, it will give our White House bonehead a ceremonial stage to play statesman in mourning for the rest of the week until Reagan’s burial. Will that get the bonehead a bump in the polls? We think so. When he pays blustering lip service to the noble ideals that Reagan […]

We all need something to get us out of bed. Here’s what gets me up in the morning: Bill Moyers on truth and journalism. If you’ve got a few minutes — OK, 30 minutes — have a look at him speaking recently at the National Conference on Media Reform in Madison, Wisc. Moyer’s keynote address […]

We’re familiar with all the objections to Ralph Nader’s presidential candidacy. But we still believe he has every right to run. We also believe he’s the most  passionate, intelligent, accomplished and honest of all the current candidates. If the American people want to elect the presumptive Democratic candidate John Kerry, they should vote for him —  as we will, […]

A report this morning from the Associated Press: Enron traders gleeful at ripping off grandmas. “Enron traders openly discussed manipulating California’s power market during profanity-laced telephone conversations in which they gloated about ripping off ‘those poor grandmothers’ during the state’s energy crunch in 2000-01, according to transcripts of the calls.” An editorial this morning from […]

The full-page newspaper ad for THE CONCERT FOR JOHN KERRY at Radio City Music Hall had a star-spangled banner wrapped around an electric guitar. Black background. White type. It said: “A Change Is Going to Come.” It said there will be performances by Jon Bon Jovi, Whoopi Goldberg, Wyclef Jean, John Mellencamp, Bette Midler, James Taylor and […]

Now that Daniel Okrent, the public editor of The New York Times, has given us his opinion about the Times’ mea culpa, what’s the verdict? Okrent writes, “I think they got it right. Mostly.” He blames the paper in general for hyping its dead-wrong reports that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction during the […]

Joseph Califano Jr. has written a new memoir, “Inside: A Public and Private Life,” which makes some startling claims about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A longtime political insider who started out as one of Robert McNamara’s Pentagon “whiz kids,” Califano was privvy to much that is still not completely understood about the […]

Brian Whitaker describes the problem of catching terrorists in Saudi Arabia — or rather not catching them — in a London Guardian report headlined “Paying the price for incompetence.” Think of it as the Keystone Kops, Saudi-style. What “often happens in the kingdom,” he writes, “[is] a case of the police stumbling on a plot by […]

The Memorial Day weekend is upon us. It’s time to take a break. We leave for ours with a couple of reminders. One is entertaining: Jon Stewart’s commencement address a couple of weeks ago at his alma mater, The College of William & Mary, where “roughly 13,000 people packed into William and Mary Hall” to […]

A lot of people are wagging their fingers at the mea culpa admitted yesterday by The New York Times. Frankly, some of the finger-waggers seem to be piling on, not that the errors don’t deserve a more thorough airing. But it seems, too, that the Times has trouble learning from its own mistakes. The errors […]

Before taking a few days off for the long Memorial Day weekend, we feel an obligation to address some unfinished business: a recent email exchange with blogger Steve Sailer involving the item “Scraping Bottom” (May 10), which followed up on an earlier item, “The Spectrum from Blue to Red” (May 5). If posting the exchange […]

Jack Shafer was correct yesterday when he reported in Slate that The New York Times was preparing an “Editors’ Note” reassessing “its pre-Iraq War coverage, particularly its coverage of weapons of mass destruction.” Finding < EM>the note online took a bit of searching on the Times Web site. But it appears in plain view on the […]

More headlines from the torture front: “General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs” and “Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey.” It wouldn’t surprise us, given those headlines, that the administration arranged to take our minds off them with today’s alert: “U.S. Warns of Al Qaeda Threat During Summer,” but there’s “Nothing […]

Remember what Kevin Phillips said about the Bush family? “Over four generations they have honed a pattern of loyalty to [America’s] wealthiest 0.01 percent … How you do that over four generations and not take that loyalty to the White House is not credible.” If anyone doubts his words, they should have a look at […]

The Divine Miss S — a friend’s not altogether admiring nom de plume for Susan Sontag — told us: “It is probable that the ‘torture’ word will continue to be banned” by the W. gang. Tim Rutten, the Los Angeles Times media columnist, writing a week before her piece appeared in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, […]

Now hear this: The entire “state of Vermont — and its charm — is threatened by a corporate behemoth, a nonprofit preservation group warned on Monday,” The Associated Press reports. “The alleged culprit: Wal-Mart.” Because of plans for several new Wal-Mart Supercenters across the state, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed the entire […]

What’s your opinion about Rummy boy, aka Bush’s lip? The other day the liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof surprised himself by “Sticking Up for Rumsfeld.” He wrote that demands for Rummy boy’s resignation struck him as “unfair and premature,” even though he has “presided over the most foolish conflict since the War of Jenkins’ Ear in the 18th […]