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An Editor’s Note I don’t know when I began being paranoid about job security. I’d like to think it was working for newspaper editor John R. Starr from 1985 to his retirement in 1992, because if you just read his caustic columns, who could blame me. It’s likely to be my nature, from childhood. After […]
An Editor’s Note It’s incredible that no wag by now has given our era a name that sticks, goes viral. The announcements and actions coming out of Washington this year — with no sign of slowing — qualify for uniqueness. We came close in 2017-2021 to a singular name, but no go. Maybe that’s because […]
An Editor’s Note President Trump soon will sign a huge cut to federal public broadcast funding, which got congressional approval July 18, as The Associated Press reported, “Congress Approves Trump’s $9 Billion Cut to Public Broadcasting and Foreign Aid.” Of that, about $1.1 billion was earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that in turn […]
This frescoe at Pompeii shows a parrot pulling a chariot driven by a cricket. Credit Library of Congress
2 of 2. See 1. One of the most disturbing bits about President Trump’s rapid destaffing and defunding of federal agencies and programs is the silence. What about cable news channels and social media, they won’t shut up about it, you ask. What about the growing street protests and overflowing town hall meetings, whether Republican […]
The final draft of this 1987 prestamped postcard depicts some drafters of the U.S. Constitution meeting in Philadelphia in 1797. From left are George Mason, Gouveneur Morris, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Charles C. Pickney.
1 of 2. See 2. So many times in so many, many years, we are captivated by news from Washington yet breathe relief that as dramatic as it is, it doesn’t hit all that close. Not this year, oh boy. U.S. colleges and universities in recent weeks got the same memos, more or less literally. […]
This Is Good for the Jews At dusk on Halloween, in the vicinity of 34 years ago, about 1990, my cat B.C. and I happened to be looking out my front window, and she jumped, leaving the window for mid-floor. I saw a young man halfway up the Little Rock apartment’s sidewalk in SS Gestapo […]